YOUNG PEOPLE'S 

STORY OF 

AMERICAN 

LITERATURE 



IDA PRENTICE 
WHlTCblVlB 




Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Young People's Story of 
American Literature 




CO 

H 
H 
O 
U 

< 

w 

O 

o 



w 

C/3 

o 

o 
< 

O 

w 



Young People's Story 

of 
American Literature 



By 

Ida Prentice Whitcomb 

Author of "A Bunch of Wild Flowers for the Children/ ' 

"Heroes of History," "Young People's Story 

of Art," ' ' Young People "s Story 

of Music," etc. 



With Numerous Illustrations 




New York 
Dodd, Mead and Company 






Copyright, 1913 
By DODD, mead & COMPANY 



//^ 



©CI.A35424 3 



TO 

M. p. B. 



FOREWORD 

A STORY is not necessarily bound by historical per- 
spective; and in the following ''Young People's 
Story of American Literature," the aim has been 
three-fold: First, to bring into clear outline such 
biographical and dramatic elements as appeal to 
young people and stimulate them to seek further. 

Second, to incite the youth and maiden in com- 
mitting to memory poetic selections. These faith- 
fully garnered will prove a rich treasure. 

Third, to interest the student in visiting the shrines 
of our own land as eagerly as those abroad. 

In collecting materials for the book, the writer 
has been enabled through great courtesy to visit 
many of the places mentioned, and has noted much 
of local value in a desire to add colour to the story. 
Every shrine visited has made more vivid the per- 
sonality associated with it. 

So the '' Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly," are in 
brief: To seek companionship of the best books; to 
memorise choice poems; and to make pilgrimages 
to the homes of American authors. 

The writer acknowledges, with thanks, the per- 
mission given by Houghton, Mifflin and Company to 



FOREWORD 

reprint extracts from the works of Whittier, Low- 
ell, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Stedman, and 
others; by Charles Scribner's Sons to quote from the 
poems of Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Eugene Field, 
and Sidney Lanier; by Small, Maynard and Company 
to quote short extracts from the poems of Rev. John 
B. Tabb; by Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company 
to quote from the poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne; 
by D. Appleton and Company to quote from the 
poems of William CuUen Bryant; and by Little, 
Brown and Company to quote *' Poppies in the 
Wheat," copyright 1892, by Roberts Brothers, and 
also some short quotations from other poems of 
Helen Hunt Jackson. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Evolution of the Book i 

II Beginnings of the Story ........ 4 

III Jamestown and Captain John Smith .... 6 

IV Other Writers of the Virginia Colony ... 13 
V Pilgrim and Puritan Chroniclers . . . . . . x6 

VI Early Theologians 24 

VII Diarists and Poets 34 

VIII Benjamin Franklin 41 

IX Revolutionary Leaders 55 

X The Nation-Builders 63 

XI Glances Backward and Forward 72 

XII Washington Irving 76 

XIII James Fenimore Cooper 90 

XIV William Cullen Bryant loi 

XV Spasmodic Poems and Songs 114 

XVI John Greenleaf Whittier 124 

XVII War Literature 140 

XVIII Bancroft and Prescott 156 

XIX Motley and Parkman 165 

XX New Influences in Puritan New England ... 175 

XXI Ralph Waldo Emerson . . .180 

XXII Henry David Thoreau 196 

XXIII Nathaniel Hawthorne 205 

XXIV Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 220 

XXV James Russell Lowell 240 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVI Oliver Wendell Holmes 256 

-- XXVII Edgar Allan Poe 275 

-. XXVIII Other Southern Writers .291 

XXIX Western Literature 304 

XXX A Group of Eastern Authors 318 

XXXI Woman in American Literature — Part First . .335 

XXXII Woman in American Literature — Part Second . 343 

Afterword • • • • • • 35S 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Orchard House: Home of the Alcotts . . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Evolution of the Book: Cairn," Oral, Hieroglyphics .... 2 

Evolution of the Book: Pictograph, Manuscript, Printing Press 4 

Monument to Capt. John Smith, Jamestown, Va 10 

Gov. John Winthrop . 18 

Cotton Mather 18 

John Eliot 18 

Jonathan Edwards 18 

National Monument, Plymouth, Mass ........ 36 

Thomas Jefferson 44 

Alexander Hamilton 44 

Benjamin Franklin 44 

Samuel Sewall 44 

Page from Poor Richard's Almanac, September, 1738 ... 53 

Washington Irving 78 

J. Fenimore Cooper . • 78 

Fitz-Greene Hallock . 78 

William Cullen Bryant • 78 

Sunny side: Home of Washington Irving 86 

Monument to J. Fenimore Cooper, Cooperstown, N. Y. . . . 96 

William Cullen Bryant Memorial, Bryant Park, New York . . 108 

John Howard Payne's "Home Sweet Home," East Hampton, L. I. 118 
Home of John Greenleaf Whittier, Amesbury, Mass . . . .130 

William Lloyd Garrison 142 

Daniel Webster 142 

Henry Clay 143 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 142 

Lincoln Emancipation Statue at Washington, D. C 150 

Francis Parkman 160 

John Lothrop Motley ^ 160 

George Bancroft 160 

William H. Prescott 160 

School of Philosophy, Concord, Mass 176 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 184 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 184 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Henry David Thoreau 184 

Louisa M. Alcott 184. 

Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord, Mass 192 

The Thoreau Cairn and Thoreau Cove, Lake Walden . . .198 

Old Manse, Concord, Mass 208 

The Wayside: Home of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Concord, Mass. 216 

Henry Wads worth Longfellow 222 

James Russell Lowell 222 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 222 

John Greenleaf Whittier 222 

Craigie House: Home of Henry W. Longfellow, Cambridge, 

Mass 232 

Elmwood : Home of James Russell Lowell, Cambridge, Mass . 248 

Edgar Allan Poe 276 

Sidney Lanier 276 

Paul H. Hayne 276 

Rev. John B. Tabb 276 

Poe's Cottage at Fordham, New York City 284 

Samuel L. Clemens 308 

Francis Bret Harte 308 

Eugene Field 308 

Henry Cuyler Bunner 308 

Edward Clarence Stedman 320 

Bayard Taylor 320 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich . . 320 

Walt Whitman 320 

Edward Everett Hale 330 

Frank R. Stockton 330 

William Dean Howells 330 

F. Marion Crawford 330 

Celia L. Thaxter 340 

Sarah Orne Jewett 340 

Helen Hunt Jackson 340 

Mary Mapes Dodge • • • . . . 340 



** Books are keys to wisdom's treasure; 
Books are gates to lands of pleasure; 
Books are paths that upward lead; 
Books are friends, come, let us read! '' 

POULSSON, 



I 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 

An English author rightly traces the origin of the 
book to the depth of some Asiatic forest, where centu- 
ries agone a rude savage stood, thorn in hand, etching 
upon a leaf — perhaps torn from a giant palm — a 
symbol by which to commemorate either joy or strug- 
gle in his simple life; and thus the tree became the 
parent of the book — the word '* book " being de- 
rived from the beech with its smooth and silvery bark, 
found by our Saxon forefathers in the German forest, 
and the leaf explains itself. 

Another more pictorial illustration of the origin 
of the book, we find in a series of six panels, painted 
by Mr. John W. Alexander, of New York, in the 
new Congressional Library, at Washington. 

In the first of these expressive frescoes, prehis- 
toric man erects upon the seashore a rough cairn of 
boulders. The task is laborious, but he must needs 
make his record. 

In the second, the Oriental story-teller dramatic- 
ally relates his tale to a group of absorbed listeners : 
this typifies oral tradition. 

Again we look, and the Egyptian stone-cutter 
chisels his hieroglyphics upon the face of a tomb. 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

His cutting is vigorous and incisive — his tale is 
made to live. 

Yet another, and a graceful American Indian 
paints upon a buffalo-skin the pictograph, which rep- 
resents the war-trail or the chase. 

We next glance into the dim scriptorium where 
the monastic scribe patiently illuminates his manu- 
script; and as the final evolution, Gutenberg eagerly 
scans the proof that has just come from the printing- 
press — his gift to the world. 

So from prehistoric age to twentieth century, leaf, 
cairn and altar, oral tradition, hieroglyphic and 
pictograph, waxed tablet, illuminated manuscript 
and printing-press — have all had part in leading 
up to the book — the ultimate triumph of modern 
thought. 

And the book is the vehicle of literature; and the 
literature that it holds is the reflection and repro- 
duction alike of the intellect and deed of the people. 

Honest John Morley says : — 

" Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, historians, masters 
of fiction, great preachers, character-writers, political ora- 
tors, maxim-writers — all are literature.'* 

The story of literature is a curious and varied 
one that has unravelled century by century as Egypt, 
Assyria, Persia, China and India, Greece and Rome, 
and the more modern countries, have in turn added 
their records. 



-o-l«ff?#'-i-^ 




CAIRN 



?'i'S^mmM'»''^'m&^''-^ . 




ORAL TRADITION 




EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS 

Copyright, by Curtis & Cameron 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 
MURAL DECORATIONS IN THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 

Our subject is American literature. This, how- 
ever, being but a branch of English literature, we 
join In the ranks and inspiration of that long and 
splendid procession, which, for twelve hundred years, 
has been marching along. 

Our environment, it is true, has been different: 
another land and climate and social organisation, 
with democratic political problems to solve; but all 
the same, we, too, claim ancestral right in Chaucer 
and Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton — and 
English literature is indeed our glorious heritage. 

And as we consider the work of our up-to-date 
author, seated in his library — running his fingers 
lightly over the keys of his typewriter — let us not 
forget the gratitude due to that primitive savage, 
who, In the fragrant woodland, traced his inspira- 
tion upon the leaf of a tree, and thus took the prst 
step in the evolution of the book. 



II 

BEGINNINGS OF THE STORY 

American literature — where does it begin? 
Surely not among the prehistoric mound-builders 
whose instruments and ornaments are unearthed to- 
day. They builded their homes, tilled their soil, 
and worked their mines, but thus their record sadly 
ends: " They had no poet and they died." 

Next, in historic sequence, we glance at the In- 
dian, who is becoming to-day more and more to the 
American author a theme of romance. What was 
his contribution to the literature of an aboriginal 
age? It was scanty indeed — but it formed a be- 
ginning; for his speech and songs of magic and love 
displayed bold courage and an eloquent symbolism 
that we may not overlook. 

The following, taken from Dr. Schoolcraft's 
" Indian Tribes " is an expressive illustration: — 

" My love is tall and graceful as the young pine waving 
on the hill, and as swift in his course as the noble, stately 
deer; his hair is flowing and dark, as the blackbird that 
floats through the air, and his eyes like the eagle's, both 
piercing and bright; his heart, it is fearless and great, and 
his arm, it is strong in the fight, as this bow made of iron 
wood which he easily bends. His aim is as sure in the 
fight and chase as the hawk which ne'er misses its prey, 

4 




PICTOGRAPH 




MANUSCRIPT BOOK 




PRINTING PRESS 
Copyright, by Curtis & Cameron 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 

MURAL DECORATIONS IN THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER 



BEGINNINGS OF THE STORY 

Ah, aid me, ye spirits! of water, of earth, and of sky, while 
I sing his praise." 

Leaving behind us the mound-builder and the In- 
dian, we next consider true American literature, 
which is divided into three periods: Colonial, Revo- 
lutionary, and National. 

The Colonial began in America when in *' Merrie 
England '' the golden '' Elizabethan Age " was at 
its height: when Shakespeare was unfolding his mar- 
vellous creations, and when Spenser sang of his 
*' Fairie Queene," England disporting itself alike 
in drama and pageant. 

Colonial literature here forms striking contrast 
to the brilliant period abroad, and it must have small 
space in our scheme, compared to that we must give 
to Revolutionary and National; and yet there is 
revealed in it to-day an increasing interest. We 
hear much of Colonial Dames and houses and archi- 
tecture and historic data. 

Truly these colonists " builded better than they 
knew," and our first duty must be to trace the earlier 
foot-prints which they made. 



Ill 

JAMESTOWN AND CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

Colonial literature has two divisions: one treats 
of *' Jamestown and the Cavalier " — the other of 
" Plymouth, the Pilgrim, and the Puritan." We 
consider *' Jamestown and the Cavalier " first, for 
this was the earlier. 

It was in the winter of 1606, that a party of 
romantic aristocrats, unruly gallants, mechanics and 
farmers, and beggars pushed thither by friends — 
adventurers all — set out in a pigmy fleet of three 
ships from England for America. They were under 
a charter to a London Company to seek here gold 
mines and precious stones. 

Four months they sailed over three thousand 
miles of unknown sea, and finally in April, 1607, 
were driven by storm into a large river, its shores 
blooming with dogwood and redbud, and on a bright 
day, they landed on the bank at a perilous spot ; and 
James River and Jamestown were later named in 
honour of their illustrious English King. 

This was the region which the chivalrous Sir 
Walter Raleigh — the dauntless sailor — had pre- 
viously penetrated in one of his futile attempts to 
colonise North America; and though he had not 

6 



JAMESTOWN AND CAPTAIN SMITH 

conquered, he had succeeded in christening the land 
Virginia, in gratitude to his '' Virgin Queen," and 
this name yet binds Virginia to the Mother Country. 

And as at Jamestown our forbears disembarked 
— the dense wilderness behind, the wide ocean be- 
fore — how little they realised the boundless future ! 
With the exception of Gosnold and Captain John 
Smith, they knew nothing of leadership, but many 
of them were manly men who loved liberty and ad- 
venture. The struggle was bitterly waged against 
famine and the Indians; but out of all, the Virginia 
colony was established — the jirst permanent English 
settlement in North America. 

There may have been imaginative, resourceful 
spirits among these pioneers, but what wonder that 
they had scant leisure for literary pursuits — for 
drama or pageant or smooth narrative. No poet or 
novelist could assert himself. These were days of 
action not thought; and yet in compacts and journals 
and letters home, we may discover, even at this 
remote date, the beginnings of our story of Ameri- 
can literature — for we at once descry the picturesque 
figure of the redoubtable John Smith — soldier, 
captain, governor, saviour and historian, of the 
colony. 

He stands at the gateway of American literature 
just as the old tramp-explorer. Sir John Mandeville, 
stood three hundred years before, at the gateway of 
English literature. 

7 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

A born fighter was this Lincolnshire boy, who 
very early ran away from home, '' foreign countries 
for to see." He fought in France, the Netherlands, 
and Italy; he fought the Spanish, Tartars and 
Turks; and blazoned on his escutcheon were the 
heads of three Turkish champions that he had sev- 
ered in single combat. 

He encountered shipwreck and slavery; and a 
veritable knight-errant of English chivalry, he re- 
turned to London, at the age of twenty-five — a 
battle-scarred hero. 

Then catching Gasnold's enthusiasm, he was 
seized with a mania for colonisation, and being just 
in time, he started in 1607, with the motley crew 
for Jamestown. They sailed for the riches of the 
South Sea — they found as their '' El Dorado " only 
cotton and tobacco; but dependable Captain Smith 
endured hardships and disappointments with opti- 
mism. 

In his little pinnace. Discovery, he explored the 
Virginian bays, so carefully surveying the coast, 
that among his works he published, in 161 2, *' A 
Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, 
the Commodities, People, Government, and Reli- 
gion " — a voluminous title, but it was a fashion in 
those days to make a title a summary of the contents 
of a book. 

Captain Smith bartered so skilfully with the In- 
dians that he kept the colony from starvation. His 

8 



JAMESTOWN AND CAPTAIN SMITH 

services were of unquestioned value: at one time 
governor — at another barely escaping the gallows 
— his zeal being always greater than his discretion. 

After hundred of settlers had been added to the 
colony, he was removed; returning afterwards to 
explore the New England shores, he received from 
King James the title " Admiral of New England." 
All told, he was in America less than three years. 

Captain Smith's life did not seem adapted to lite- 
rary achievement, but he wrote two booklets here 
which gave him a place in colonial literature. His 
other works belong to the long, quieter years that 
followed his going back to England. 

It is strange to think of the hardy soldier, seated 
in his aboriginal hut of logs and mud, and on an im- 
provised desk with goose-quill pen, recounting his 
deeds. His apology is, that he '' admired those 
whose pens had writ what their swords had done." 
He explained that he could not " write as a clerk, but 
as a soldier," and he begs his friends and well- 
wishers to accept the results ! 

There being no printing-press in America, his first 
writings appeared in London, in 1608 — the year 
that Milton was born. Eight volumes, large and 
small, related to Virginia, giving account *' of Such 
Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath Hap- 
pened " there. In fact. Captain Smith must not only 
have interested others in book-making but also 
tempted many to the colony. 

9 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

His best book, ** A General History of Virginia," 
is a rough-hewn recountal of the initial contact with 
the wilderness, made by the adventurous pen of one 
who was always the centre of the adventures! His 
fault was boastfulness — but had he not a right to 
glory in his great deeds? 

In speaking of Virginia, he quaintly says : — 

" There is but one entrance into this country, and that 
is at the mouth of a goodly bay eighteen or twenty miles 
broad. . . . Within is a country that may have the 
prerogative over the most pleasant places known, for earth 
and heaven never agreed better to frame a place for man's 
habitation. The mildness of the air, the fertility of the 
soil, and the situation of the rivers are as propitious to the 
use of man, as no place is more convenient for pleasure, 
profit, and man's sustenance, under any latitude or climate. 
So, then, here is a place, a nurse for soldiers, a practice for 
mariners, a trade for merchants, a reward for the good, and 
that which is most of all, a business to bring such poor in- 
fidels to the knowledge of God and His Holy Gospel." 

Recall these words to-day! Think of his Old 
Point Comfort — of the many that have since found 
comfort within its harbour; and of its Military 
School which has become truly *' a nurse for sol- 
diers"; of Hampton Roads and '* its practice for 
mariners " ; of ** the trade for merchants," at New- 
port News and Norfolk; and best of all, of the 
gracious Hampton Institute, with its civilising and 
Christianising influences. Was not Captain Smith, 

10 




r«-r'~^-K-^*- '-'— " 



MONUMENT TO CAPT. JOHN SMITH, JAMESTOWN, VA, 



JAMESTOWN AND CAPTAIN SMITH 

with everything else, gifted with prophetic vision? 

Besides, he first gave the Indian to American lit- 
erature, for you remember that he lived long before 
Cooper and Longfellow. For the race in general, 
he had no respect. He dubs the Indian as incon- 
stant, crafty, cautious and covetous, quick-tempered, 
malicious and treacherous. He made an exception, 
however, in his Pocahontas story; it may be a myth 
but it is his finest bit of colouring. 

How vivid is the picture of his capture by Pow- 
hatan — his rescue by the beautiful maiden; of her 
bringing corn to the famished colonists, and her 
later royal reception in London as the daughter of 
an Indian king. It is the first dramatic tale that 
comes into American literature. 

John Smith began his literary work when Shakes- 
peare was. writing; he, too, was a dramatist, but in 
a different way. While some of his descriptions 
border on the marvellous, he is always able to make 
up in romance what he lacks in history, and his com- 
positions have done more to preserve his fame than 
his brave doings. 

His enemies accused him of exaggeration, saying 
that '' He writ too much, and done too little." But 
whatever he '* writ " and whatever he *'done," his 
chivalrous narrative is a most valuable literary relic. 

We do not like to think that Captain John Smith, 
our earnest chronicler, *' died poor and neglected in 
England," — but so it is told. 

II 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The ** English Drayton " in a " spirited valedic- 
tory " to the three ship-loads of heroic fortune- 
hunters who had sailed from England, in 1606, 
prophesies for them a literary future : — 

** And as there plenty grows 

Of laurel everywhere, — 
Apollo's sacred tree — 
You It may see 
A poet's brows 
To crown, that may sing there," 



12 



IV 

OTHER WRITERS OF THE VIRGINIA COLONY 

And there were other attempts besides that of Cap- 
tain John Smith to leave to posterity a literary rec- 
ord. William Strachey, secretary of the colony, 
wrote and sent to London, in 1610, a manuscript, 
telling of a fierce storm and shipwreck off the Ber- 
muda Islands — " the still vex'd Bermoothes " ; and 
this thrilling description, it is thought, may have 
furnished a plot to Shakespeare in '* The Tempest." 

George Sandys, treasurer of the colony, working 
sometimes by the light of a pine knot, made a most 
imaginative translation of Ovid's *^ Metamorphoses," 

And there were later adventurers and annalists: 
among them, Colonel William Byrd, a wealthy and 
brilliant man, and an amateur in literature, who, in 
1736, when writing the history of his experience in 
running a dividing line between Virginia and North 
Carolina, gives a pleasant picture of colonial life; 
but he says : — 

" They import so many negroes hither, that I fear the 
colony will, some time or other, be known by the name of 
* New Guinea.' '' 

Bacon's Rebellion was one of the most striking 

13 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

episodes in these anti-Revolutionary times; and in 
1676, '* The Burwell Papers" described it, and in 
these appeared some elegiac verses on the death of 
Nathaniel Bacon. 

So Virginia, the *' Cradle of the Republic," be- 
came, also, the '' Cradle " of a literature associated 
with noble names. 

Many of the colonists came from the titled ranks 
of English society. They were the originators of 
the '' F. F. V's," or '' First Families of Virginia," 
and strongly bound both to royalty and the Estab- 
lished Church. Instead of building many towns, 
these planters spent a manorial existence on their 
broad estates, devoting their free and careless hours 
to fox-hunting, horse-racing, and cock-fighting. 

Robert Beverly, in his '' History of Virginia," 
published in 1705, emphasises Southern hospitality. 
Indeed, this was one of the strongest traits in the 
character of the planter. Families of ample means 
sent their sons abroad to be educated; and the court- 
house rather than the school was the nucleus of social 
and political life. 

It was proposed early in the seventeenth century 
to build a University, and some Englishmen donated 
the money for the purchase of the land ; but a terrible 
Indian massacre interfered. So William and Mary 
College was not begun at Williamsburg until 1660, 
and did not receive its charter until 1693. It was 
closely fashioned after Oxford, in England; and 

14 



WRITERS OF VIRGINIA COLONY 

James Blair, its founder, and author of ** The 
Present State of Virginia," was a man alike of force 
and intellect. And many more old chroniclers there 
were who wrote about Virginia, the State destined 
later on to be *' The Mother of Presidents." 
Doubtless, their documents are historically valuable 
but they would form curious reading for us. 

And what may we find in Jamestown to-day to 
help us recall our earliest colonial literature? Only 
a few indefinite relics. Captain Smith selected this 
as '* a fit place for a great city," but it proved too 
marshy and unhealthful. The land, however, has 
been recently set apart by the ** Virginia Antiquarian 
Society," in order to preserve the ruins. 

Among them, there is seen under water the re- 
mains of a powder-house built by Captain Smith. 
There are, also, some graves in an ancient burial- 
ground. The most attractive thing is an old church 
tower, which legend says stands upon the spot where, 
under a sail stretched between the trees, the colonists 
first worshipped. Near this to-day is a statue of 
valorous John Smith, whose pluck and daring laid 
the foundation of our earliest literary structure. The 
inscription reads: *' So thou art brass without but gold 
within." 



15 



PILGRIM AND PURITAN CHRONICLERS 

Jamestown and Plymouth were the rallying-points 
of very distinct ideals in this dawn of American civ- 
ilisation, and the contrast was typical even in the 
landing of Cavaliers and Pilgrims. 

The former arrived in Virginia, amid the blossom 
and fragrance of the Southern spring-time, while the 
Pilgrims, in 1620, thirteen years later, disembarked 
in the dead of winter on the bleak New England 
coast — so bleak that in a few months there were 
but forty-four survivors of the hundred who had 
come on the Mayflower. 

Stern men were these Pilgrims! Having earlier 
opposed the Established Church, they had been 
"harried out of England, by King James I, and 
after toilsome years in Holland, the little company 
set sail for America — not seeking gold and gems 
like the Cavaliers but just * Freedom to worship 
God.' " And with the Puritans who landed with 
Winthrop, in 1630, they were for nearly two cen- 
turies masters of the religious, political, and literary 
life of New England. 

These devout Old Testament heroes laboured with 
desperate zeal, for time was too solemn to be frit- 

16 



PILGRIM, PURITAN CHRONICLERS 

tered away. Narrow and bigoted, of restrained 
speech, they had come to enjoy religious liberty — 
never to give it! Those who dared differ from 
them must follow their example and seek other lands. 
In truth, these fanatical nation-builders commended 
the persecution of witches, and forbade Friends and 
Baptists to join them. 

Yet with all their fanaticism and all their mistakes 
— they planted '' a Government by the People, a 
Church without a Bishop, a State without a King/' 
Perhaps they did this more securely, because their 
vision was bounded by theology, law, and education. 

Plymouth, Massachusetts, was their first settle- 
ment, and hardly were their primitive cabins built 
here before the rectangular meeting-house topped 
the hill; and on its flat roof small cannon were 
placed, making it at once a military as well as reli- 
gious post. Summoned to church by the drum-beat, 
it was compulsory to go, and none were freemen 
until they became church members. 

Every man carried his gun, and with the Indian 
ever in the foreground, spiritual warfare was too 
often converted into earthly conflict. The Bible was 
the text-book; the sermon might easily be from 
two to four hours long, and the prayers, too, were 
lengthy and profound. 

At first, the congregation did not sing, for sing- 
ing turned the mind from God; but Rev. John Cot- 
ton investigated the subject under several heads, and 

17 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

citing as an illustration that Paul and Silas sang 
Psalms in prison, it was finally decided that the 
Puritans might sing, too. 

Several divines assisted in making a metrical ver- 
sion of the Book of Psalms. In doing this, they 
were faithful to the original Hebrew, and the ver- 
sion was inharmonious, without poetic grace, the 
apology being : — 

"We have respected rather a plaine translation then to 
smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrases 
and soe have attended conscience rather than elegance. 
. . . That soe we may sing in Sion the Lord*s songs of 
prayse according to his owne will; until hee take us from 
hence and wipe away all our teares, and bid us enter our 
Master's ioye to sing eternall Hallehuiahs." 

The '' Bay Psalm Book " was one of the very 
first books printed in America. It came from the 
Cambridge Press, in 1640. When it was used the 
Psalms were lined off, two lines at a time, and this 
was followed by the command " Sing ! " To-day 
the '' Bay Psalm Book " is a curiosity of literature. 
Here is one of the paraphrases : — 

" How good and sweet, O see 
For brethren 'tis to dwell 

As one in unity! 
It's like choice oyl that fell 

The head upon 
That down the beard unto 
Beard of Aaron." 
18 




.1 



\ J 

\ • ' 
I .'f 



■a 



GOV. JOHN WliiTHROP 



COTTON MATHER 







Fiom an old wood cut. 

JOHN ELIOT 



JONATHAN EDWARDS 



f I 






PILGRIM, PURITAN CHRONICLERS 

It may be added that attendance at service was 
the only amusement shared by the sanctimonious 
Pilgrims, and from it came strength for the weekly 
conflict. To them, " Remember the Sabbath day, to 
keep it holy " held a meaning quite unknown now. 
New Englanders may well be proud of such ancestry, 
and yet congratulate themselves that they did not 
belong to the earlier generations. 

Literature in these days was the handmaid of re- 
ligion, and attendance at school was as obligatory as 
at church. Settlements of fifty families were com- 
pelled to establish a school — if there were a hun- 
dred, it must be a grammar-school. 

In 1636, Cambridge College was founded. It 
did not receive — like William and Mary, in Vir- 
ginia — rich gifts from English donors; but the four 
hundred pounds with which it was started were gotten 
in New England. Two years later, by bequest of 
John Harvard, a young Charlestown minister, the 
college had an endowment fund of three thousand 
five hundred dollars, and three hundred volumes 
constituting his entire library. 

In 1639, it was ordered that *' the college agreed 
upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shal bee 
called Harvard CoUedge," in honour of its first 
benefactor; and in 1650, the Institution was char- 
tered '' for the education of the English and Indian 
youth of the country in knowledge and godlyness." 

Nearly a hundred years after John Harvard's 

19 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

death, the alumni of Harvard University erected a 
monument to his memory in the burial-ground of 
Charlestown, dedicated with an address by Edward 
Everett. 

Yale College was founded in 1700, and its library 
was begun at a meeting of Connecticut ministers, 
each depositing forty books upon a table, declaring 
as he laid them down: " I give these books for the 
founding of a college in this colony." A commem- 
orative stone may be seen at Saybrook, Connecticut, 
the original site of the college. 

We are reminded of Burges Johnson's words : - — 

" The little Yankee colleges, God bless them heart and 
soul — 
Each little lump of leaven that leaveneth the whole ; 
What need of mighty numbers if they fashion, one by one, 
The men who do the little things a-needing to be done ? " 

And from the *' stern and rock-bound " New Eng- 
land coast — the land of the evening lamp and the 
winter fire — has come to us a more abundant litera- 
ture than from the " Sunny South." Weighty tomes 
there are with cumbersome titles that belong to the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and while our 
literature of to-day concerns itself chiefly with the 
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we must, in order 
to get the continuity of our subject, take from the top 
shelf of the dark closet a few of these dusty record- 
ings, and glance at the men who penned them. 

20 



PILGRIM, PURITAN CHRONICLERS 

Governor Bradford — himself a Mayflower 
passenger — was an inveterate diarist. He ruled 
the Province from 1621 to 1657, and it is said that 
he managed the affairs with the discretion of a Wash- 
ington. He was the skilful diplomat who — during 
a famine when a chief sent to the colony a bundle of 
arrows tied in a serpent's skin — returned the skin 
crammed with powder and bullets. 

Governor Bradford appears here not because of 
his political wisdom, but as the author of his unique 
** History of Plymouth Plantation." This was not 
written in Captain John Smith's boastful style, but 
just as a quaint, vigorous, straightforward chronicle, 
inspired by piety. 

It describes feelingly the persecution in England; 
the departure for Holland; the setting forth from 
Delfthaven; the perils encountered on the furious 
ocean; the compact and the landing; the desolate 
wilds and famine; the sufferings and death-roll of the 
first winter; troubles and treaties with the Indians; 
the building of the State on a sure foundation; — all 
ending in peace and liberty. 

This picturesque but ponderous year-book would 
have made Governor Bradford a forerunner in 
letters, but he can hardly be ranked as *' The Father 
of American Literature," as he has sometimes been 
styled. There are fine passages but little perspective. 
The following which refers to leaving Holland has 
alvvays been accounted a gem. — 

ai 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

"So they lefte yt goodly and pleasant citie which had 
been ther resting-place near 12 years; but they knew they 
were pilgrimes, and looked not much on those things, but 
lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest countrie, and 
quieted their spirits." 

The manuscript of this famous *' History of Ply- 
mouth Plantation," consisting of two hundred and 
seventy pages, disappeared from Boston in colonial 
days, and came into the possession of the Lord Bishop 
of London. In 1897, on request, he generously re- 
stored it to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

On Plymouth's hallowed " Burial Hill," stands a 
marble obelisk, in memory of Governor William 
Bradford, Zealous Puritan and Sincere Christian, 
Governor of Plymouth Colony, 1621-1657. 

Edward Winslow (1595-1655), was another well- 
known Plymouth diarist. His, however, was a day- 
book, not a year-book. He was greatly interested 
in the Indians, specially in the courteous Massasoit. 
He became governor and was three times in oiSice. 

Governor John Winthrop (1588- 1649), ^Iso re- 
corded doings colonial. He was an aristocratic 
Englishman of marked wisdom, who, having been 
elected in England as Puritan leader of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony, set sail with his charter and 
about a thousand followers, in 1630. They settled 
on the site of modern Boston. 

Governor Winthrop, the leading spirit, was his- 
torian. His noted ''Journal," called ''A History 

22 



PILGRIM, PURITAN CHRONICLERS 

of New England," was a faithful reflection of the 
life of the country. It is in a smoother, more 
polished style, but not so picturesque as that of Gov- 
ernor Bradford. It began before leaving England 
and was continued forty years. 

All these antiquated chronicles — important though 
they be in keeping alive our history — would prove 
tedious reading now-a-days; but Hawthorne, Long- 
fellow and Whittier, by their magic touch, have 
transformed some of them into unforgettable tales. 

" A rock in the wilderness welcomed our sires, 
From bondage far over the dark rolling sea; 
On that holy altar they kindled the fires, 
Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for Thee.'* 



23 



VI 

EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

We have referred to Rev. John Cotton, in connection 
with the *' Bay Psalm Book." He was a robust 
preacher, who, fleeing from Boston, England, on ac- 
count of Bishop Laud's persecution, came over to the 
village of Trimountain, which in his honour was 
named Boston, and which as has been said was later 
the capital of Governor Winthrop's colony; and it 
is a curious fact that while he fled to escape persecu- 
tion, he waged fiercest war against the Baptist — ' 
Roger Williams. 

He wrote perhaps half a hundred books, but the 
only thing by which we recall him is his little nine- 
paged '' Catechism," entitled '* Spiritual Milk for 
Babes." This was first published in England, while 
he was pastor there In Boston; but it was many times 
re-issued in America, for it became '' the Catechism " 
in an age of catechism-making. It was bound with 
the *' Primer " so that the youngest New Englander 
might imbibe " spiritual milk " while learning the 
alphabet; and the Primer, too, was a sort of sacred 
book, many Biblical facts being inculcated in its 
study. 



EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

Indeed, with the very first letter " A " was the 
gloomy announcement : — 

" A. In Adam's fall, 
We sinned all." 

and the following are some of the other rhymes : — 

" G. As runs the glass 

Man's life doth pass. 

J. Job feels the rod 
But blesses God. 

N. Nightingales sing 
In time of spring. 

S. Samuel anoints 

Whom God appoints. 

Z. Zaccheus he 

Did climb a tree 
Our Lord to see." 

And so with nearly every letter Is Impressed some 
lesson either from the Bible or history or Nature; 
and those simple, rhythmic lines were dear to those 
who learned their " New England Catechism " *' by 
heart." When we realise what both Pilgrims and 
Puritans stood for, it was most natural that even the 
children should be trained in theology! 

Another of these early divines was Thomas 

25 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Hooker (15 86-1 649), the founder of Hartford. 
He usually preached over two hours and wrote many 
pamphlets with ponderous titles. It seems sad that 
so much brain-energy was expended in literature 
scarcely read to-day — for there were great theolo- 
gians among the makers of the new nation. 

The Mather family was far and away the most 
illustrious clerical-literary one, in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. Ten of its members were min- 
isters — three of them very famous. Sturdy, indom- 
itable supporters of Calvin's theology, their cease- 
less sermons and treaties ended only with their lives. 

First, there was the father Richard, the English 
divine, with stentorian voice and majestic manner, 
who came to New England, in 1635. Next was his 
son Increase (1639-1723), who, entering Harvard 
at twelve, was in turn preacher, diplomat, and edu- 
cator. He later became the sixth President of Har- 
vard College. He was as full of superstition as of 
piety, and devils were to him so real that he took a 
most active part In the persecution of witches. 

Increase Mather wrote nearly one hundred works, 
but we name just one — his quaint, weird '' Essay for 
Recording Illustrious Providences." It is a curious 
mixture of religious awe and sentiment, full of 
ghosts and demons and thunders and lightnings and 
persecution* 

The last and most renowned of the family was 
Cotton Mather (1663- 1728). He was so pious that 

26 



EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

as a mere child he composed forms of prayer for his 
school-mates — and he made them use them, " though 
they cuffed him " in return. As a boy, too, he under- 
took serious vigils to make himself holy, and always 
led the life of an ascetic. 

This youthful prodigy entered Harvard at eleven. 
At twelve, he knew Hebrew, and had already mas- 
tered leading Greek and Latin authors. He had a 
marvellous memory and could be theological in sev- 
eral languages, specially the dead ones: he quoted 
from classic writers quite as readily as from English 
ones. 

His principle was never to waste a single minute, 
and prominently displayed in his study to meet the 
visitor's eye, was the phrase " Be Short." He began 
to preach at seventeen, and later was associated with 
his father over North Church, Boston; and he re- 
tained this pastorate until his death, in 1728 — and 
during these forty-three years, he dominated over all 
his listeners. His style was like that of Dr. Johnson. 
While he fully justified the persecution of the witches, 
he was a life-long worker among Indians, prisoners, 
and sailors. 

He was born and he died in Boston, and was 
never one hundred miles away from this town, named 
as has been told for his maternal grandfather. Rev. 
John Cotton. It is said that he possessed one of the 
largest libraries in America. He was such an inces- 
sant writer that his own three hundred and eighty 

27 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

publications alone would have made him a good-sized 
bookcase in those days; indeed, he was himself "a 
walking library." 

The work that lives is his '* Magnalia Christi 
Americana," or " Ecclesiastical History of New Eng- 
land." This is called '' The Prize Epic of New 
England Puritanism." It was published in London, 
in 1702, and widely read in the eighteenth century. 
It is a fantastic store-house of both useful and useless 
knowledge, relating to New England life, and in its 
day it stood forth as a remarkable book. Dear old 
credulous Dr. Mather ! how the surprising stories of 
" Magnalia " interested the Puritan households ! 

And Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has told how as 
a child she ardently believed every one. She read, 
and re-read, till she felt that she, too, belonged to a 
consecrated race, and her soul was filled with a desire 
to go forth and do some valiant deed. 

If ever a man was imbued with the idea that he 
had a divine mission — that man was Cotton Mather. 

Next, in our category, we place John Eliot (1604- 
1690), *' The Apostle to the Indians." Educated 
at Cambridge, England, he appeared in New Eng- 
land, in 1 63 1. This was at a time when the Puritans 
were most incensed against the '' Salvages " or 
** Devil- Worshippers " as they called the Indians, 
and they were already beginning to crowd them out 
of the land. But colonial threats could not prevent 
Eliot from an interest in a race that he thought 

28 



EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

descendants of the " Lost Tribes of Israel/' and in 
the spirit of an old Bible prophet, he determined to 
devote his life to their conversion. 

Among his other writings, he assisted in the para- 
phrasing of the '' Bay Psalm Book"; but his won- 
derful literary monument is the translation of the 
Bible into Algonquin. We remember that the 
strange Indian language had no written form — so 
Eliot had to create one. After patiently accom- 
plishing this most difficult task, he set himself to the 
still greater one of translating the Bible into the writ- 
ten language which he had created. 

And Eliot's Bible is an inestimable contribution to 
philology, and ranks its maker among the foremost 
literary men of America. This — the first Bible 
printed here — appeared a little later in the seven- 
teenth century than the English translation so famil- 
iar to us. That was issued by order of King James 
I, and made by forty-seven scholars; John Eliot's 
work was unaided, and his Bible is in our day the 
only relic of a tribe and language of the past. There 
are probably but four copies in existence. 

Well did this faithful missionary deserve his title! 
Twenty-four of his converts assisted in establishing 
small churches of natives in both Plymouth and 
Massachusetts Bay Colonies. Even on the day of 
his death, he lay upon his bed, teaching a dusky lad 
his letters. 

Hawthorne gives Eliot this beautiful tribute: — 

29 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" I have sometimes doubted whether there was more than 
a single soul among our forefathers who realised that an 
Indian possessed a mind and a heart and an immortal soul. 
That single man was John Eliot ! ** 

We have noted how the Puritans established — 
but would not grant — liberty, and the story of Roger 
Williams (1606-1683), forms an excellent illustra- 
tion. He was an impetuous, warm-hearted Baptist 
clergyman of Salem, who dared assert that every 
one had a right to worship God in his own way. 
Indeed, Governor Winthrop relates in his '' History 
of New England " : — 

** Notwithstanding the injunction laid upon Roger Wil- 
liams not to go about to draw others to his opinion that he 
did use to entertain company in his house and preach to 
them." 

And he had to suffer for his fearless modern views. 
Driven from Massachusetts, he fled to the South, and 
founded a settlement on Narragansett Bay, which he 
named Providence, in the firm belief that God had 
directed him there. 

Roger Williams's literary theme is *' Christian 
Liberty," in defence of his constant controversies 
with the Puritans — the most memorable being 
the one with Rev. John Cotton. 

Side by side with these worthies, but in a later age, 
appears that most profound theological philosopher, 
Rev. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). 

30 



EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

He was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, and 
at six commenced the study of Latin. He was such 
a pious child that he was allowed to join the Church 
when very young — a thing unusual in those days. 
As his studies progressed, he proved to be such a 
marvel of youthful brilliancy that he was entirely be- 
yond the comprehension of his teachers. He loved 
the woods and stars — in fact was interested in all 
natural sciences — specially in electric experiments, 
even prophesying Franklin's later achievements. 

At fourteen, he said that he read Locke's *' Essay 
on the Human Understanding " '' with more pleasure 
than that felt by the greedy miner when gathering 
nuggets of gold and silver." He graduated at seven- 
teen from Yale College, and for a while remained 
there as tutor. He planned to spend thirteen hours 
daily in study, and framed seventy resolutions for his 
conduct which he aimed to keep until the end. 
Modest and lovable, enduring a life of many priva- 
tions, and never in robust health, Jonathan Edwards 
is a rare type of moral heroism. 

For twenty-three years, he was minister over the 
Northampton Church. Here his sympathy was 
aroused in the work of young David Brainerd, the 
consecrated toiler among the Indians. Brainerd 
died at the home of his pastor friend, and the latter 
wrote his life. 

The congregation at Northampton was, at first, 
strongly attracted to this young preacher; but with 

31 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

time it grew weary of his vivid, harrowing sermons, 
in which he portrayed forcibly the terrors of Calvin- 
ism — and more and more the people differed from 
their pastor on these theological tenets. It is 
strange that much as he delighted in the new era of 
scientific theories and discoveries, he held so rigidly 
to the orthodox views of his fathers. 

Finally, he was dismissed from Northampton ; and 
yet so far-reaching was his fame that one hundred 
and fifty years later, a bronze tablet in his memory 
was placed on the wall of the old church, and here 
we may see it to-day. 

Jonathan Edwards left Northampton for Stock- 
bridge, where for eight years he laboured as a mis- 
sionary among the Indians. He had a wife and ten 
children to care for and he was very poor — so poor 
that he wrote his books on the backs of letters and 
newspaper margins; when riding or walking, he 
would pin bits of paper on his coat — one for every 
thought that he wished afterwards to write down. 
Sometimes he would be seen fluttering all over with 
scraps, for he was always either thinking or writing. 

And it was at Stockb ridge that he wrote " The 
Freedom of the Will," a work which enrols him' 
among the finest metaphysical writers of the eight- 
eenth century. But though a marvel in bold think- 
ing, it is scarcely read now — and it has lost its force, 
because so few consider the subject from his point of 
view. He wished in it to show how far God governs 

32 



EARLY THEOLOGIANS 

the will, and how far people choose for themselves. 
His theory is — that the will is not self-determined, 
for if it were, God would not rule over all. 

In appreciation of Jonathan Edwards's literary 
acumen, he was elected, in 1757, President of Prince- 
ton College; and after holding office less than three 
months, he died of small-pox, and was buried in the 
graveyard at Princeton. 

His theology made a lasting Impression on the 
New England thought of the eighteenth century. 
A gentleman of forceful spirit, of mighty intellect, 
and sternest orthodoxy — such was Jonathan Ed- 
wards. 

The following are some of his " resolutions '' : — 

" Resolved, To do whatever I think to be my duty, and 
most for the good of mankind in general." 

" Resolved, To live with all my might while I do live." 

" Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but to Im- 
prove It In the most profitable way I can." 

" Resolved, Never to do anything which I should be 
afraid to do If It were the last hour of my life." 

" Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance In eat- 
ing and drinking." 



33 



VII 

DIARISTS AND POETS 

Samuel Sewall (i 662-1 730), the most famed 
colonial diarist, is known as " The Puritan Pepys." 
A graduate of Harvard, he became in 1671, Chief- 
Justice of Massachusetts, and his colonial mansion 
pointed out with pride in Newburyport High Street 
reveals the aristocratic environment in which he lived. 
As a judge, he at one time condemned the Salem 
witches, but later on, confessed to "the blame and 
shame of his decision." 

He was perhaps the earliest pronounced abolition- 
ist of Massachusetts ; for in his day there were a few 
slaves in this Northern State, and in 1700, published 
a tract entitled '' The Selling of Joseph." This was 
the first argument written in America against the 
slave-trade. 

But it is as " The Puritan Pepys " that one may 
claim more pleasing and intimate acquaintance with 
Judge Sewall than with the more religious colonial 
writers. Like the amusing English diarist, he walks 
about his narrow world, noting its fashions and 
follies, its petty humours and flirtations — photo- 
graphing his Boston as Pepys did his London. 

Though he calls himself a Puritan, we catch but 

34 



DIARISTS AND POETS 

glimpses of his exceeding piety. His '' Diary," with 
some breaks, runs for fifty-six years (1673-1729); 
and it furnishes the daily gleanings of his career from 
the time that he was a young Harvard instructor until 
a courtly, dignified judge. Matters, small and 
great, are found in picturesque variety. 

He chronicles descriptions of his relatives, friends 
and acquaintances, his four courtships, and two 
marriages. We learn of his horror of wigs and 
fondness for funerals. May-poles are set up; In- 
dians and pirates assert themselves; and we turn 
eagerly from theological doings to scan a picture 
of secular happenings in the colonies of two hun- 
dred years ago, in Judge Sewall's three, goodly 
volumes. 

What would he have thought of the comments of 
the twentieth century reader upon what he deemed, 
his private "Diary"! Many, however, think it 
about the only readable book of the day, and withal, 
it holds its own with the great diaries of the world. 

Time moves on — and brings before us another 
journal of a wholly different character, but of unique 
interest. This is the " Journal " of John Wool- 
man (17 20- 1722). Woolman was in turn clerk, 
school-teacher, tailor, preacher, anti-slavery agitator, 
and above all, a sincere and lovable Quaker. 

Let us add to the value of his work the estimate of 
others: Coleridge was fascinated by it; Crabbe calls 
it *' a perfect gem "; Charles Lamb wrote, '' Get the 

35 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

writings of Woolman by heart"; and Channing 
deems it ** the sweetest and purest autobiography in 
the language.'' Whittier, in editing the book, was 
*' solemnised by the presence of a serene and beauti- 
ful spirit." 

At this time, verse-making was a feature of colo- 
nial literature. People busy cutting down forests and 
striving for material comforts, had no leisure to cul- 
tivate either fancy or imagination, and the solemn 
Puritans frowned alike on love-song and on jest; and 
yet there were two poets of whom they boasted. 
One was Mistress Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), 
the first authoress and first poetess in the New 
World. 

She was born in England of gentle blood, care- 
fully educated, and married at sixteen. Then leav- 
ing an atmosphere of wealth and refinement for a 
home in the Massachusetts wilderness, she and her 
husband, who later became Governor Bradstreet, 
embarked for America, in 1630, with John Win- 
throp's party. 

It is singular that in her verse there is seldom a 
reference to her New England surroundings. Often 
real flowers bloom and real birds sing — but we 
catch the fragrance of English flowers and the warble 
of the lark and nightingale. She sometimes makes a 
good line but it is rarely sustained — yet the follow- 
ing stanza is well put : — 

36 










NATIONAL MONUMENT, PLYMOUTH, MASS. 



DIARISTS AND POETS 

" The fearful bird a little nest now builds, 
In trees and walls, in cities and in fields, 
The outside strong, the inside warm and neat, 
A natural artificer complete." 

Mistress Bradstreet's poems were published with- 
out her knowledge, in England, in 1650, and bore 
the fulsome title: ''The Tenth Muse lately Sprung 
up in America." We wonder what London thought 
of this collection — for it was the age of Milton! 
When the copy was shown Mistress Bradstreet, she 
expressed with pretty simplicity her feelings at seeing 
'' the ill-formed offspring of her feeble brain," and 
she blushed as many a later poet has done at the 
printer's errors. 

The Bradstreet mansion is yet pointed out at 
North Andover, Massachusetts. Here its honoured 
mistress brought up eight children, lightening the 
burden of daily life with the consolation of litera- 
ture. 

In one way or another, Richard Henry Dana, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Wendell Phillips, 
claimed descent — and perchance a touch of genius 
— from " The Tenth Muse." 

But the one famous poem in New England, two 
hundred and fifty years ago, was " The Day of 
Doom," by Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1715). 
The author who was a genial man came as a young 
boy from England. He graduated at Harvard and 
entered the ministry; but ill-health interfered with 

37 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

his preaching, as he intimately confides to the reader 
in this introduction to his popular poem : — 

" I find more true delight 
in serving of the Lord 
Than all the good things upon earth, 
Without it can afford. 
Thou wonderest perhaps 
That I in Print appear, 
Who to the Pulpit dwell so nigh 
Yet come so seldom there, 
And could my strength endure. 
That work I count so dear, 
Not all the riches of Peru 
Should have me to forbear/' 

But as his '* strength '^ did not '' endure," he gave 
to New England a perpetual poetical sermon, the 
text of which was '' The Day of Doom," and it is 
conspicuous as the earliest prolonged poem. 

This appealed tremendously to the zealous Puri- 
tan because it pictured in such terrific colouring the 
Calvinistic doctrine of '' the Elect " transported re- 
joicing to heaven, while the wicked were consigned 
to the pit of woe. It was like one of those mediaeval 
representations of the *' Last Judgment." 

The first edition printed in sheets was widely cir- 
culated. Lowell terms it *' The solace of every 
fireside." The elders pondered it, while children 
were obliged to commit it to memory with their cate- 
chism, and for a whole century Michael Wiggles- 
worth's direct and forceful — yet monotonous verses 

38 



DIARISTS AND POETS 

— in their sing-song metre, held extraordinary sway 
over the readers — even causing many to shudder! 

In citing a few landmarks of colonial literature, 
we have done it topically rather than historically. 
We have discovered that in the seventeenth century, 
the theological writers of New England — who were 
indebted for their style to their knowledge of the 
grandeur and poetic beauty of the Bible — seemed 
to overshadow all other inspirations. But in the 
eighteenth century, this solemn literature that had 
grown up about the meeting-house and the fireside 
was getting away from week-day life. 

A growing commercial prosperity was now giving 
influence to social conditions; and the colonies strewn 
along the Atlantic coast, at first independent of one an- 
other, were allied in common themes: politics rather 
than theology began to dominate statesmanship. 

There had been before a fashion for writing mort- 
uary verses and epigrams; and to these were now 
added essays and newspapers and other periodical 
literature. There was increasing interest in alma- 
nac-making. Indeed, the almanac came to be a per- 
fect encyclopaedia, full of snatches of respectable 
literature which tempted one to seek further. 

Books of Nature and travel, too, made their ap- 
pearance: as example of the latter, in 1704, Sarah 
Kemble Knight gave to the world her graphic de- 
scription of pve months' adventures on a horseback 
trip from Boston to New York. 

39 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

This colonial epoch as we have said opened when 
the glorious " Elizabethan Era " was at its zenith. 
It closed at about the time that the *' Wits " of Queen 
Anne's reign were prattling in '* Tatler " and " Spec- 
tator," and the trio of eighteenth century novelists 
were weaving their fictions. But while centuries of 
scholarly thought and life had been expended upon 
authorship in America, no drama or novel or story 
appeared in colonial literature — not one such book 
that we would mark to-day as of the highest literary 
standard. 

Plymouth, Massachusetts, which was designated 
by the Pilgrims as ** the howling wilderness " holds 
to-day more definite landmarks of their arrival there, 
in 1620, than does Jamestown of the coming of the 
Cavaliers, in 1607. This is a most interesting 
region for the student to visit. Not many miles dis- 
tant is the imposing monument at Cape Cod, recently 
dedicated, on the site of the first landing-place. 

And who can forget the beautiful panorama of 
Plymouth Harbour, the world-famed rock. Pilgrim 
Hall, the colonial houses, and Burial Hill; and 
crowning all, the noble national monument to the 
forefathers, upon which stands '* Faith." In one 
hand, she holds a Bible — with the other, she points 
heavenward. This memorial was placed here by a 
grateful people, in appreciation of labours, sacrifices, 
and sufferings, in the cause of religious liberty ! 

40 



VIII 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

Lowell calls Jamestown and Plymouth '' the two 
great distributing centres of the English race in Amer- 
ica." From each flowed a stream of colonial litera- 
ture which presently united into a swift, deep current. 
This current is symbolic of the new, broader 
thought that in the eighteenth century was at 
work, developing our story into its second or Revo- 
lutionary Period. 

The first chapter of this era must be granted to 
Benjamin Franklin, because he served his country so 
faithfully in politics and literature; and though much 
of his life belongs to colonial days, his was alike a 
formative and very modern influence. 

The youngest son of a tallow-chandler, he was 
torn in Boston, in 1706, and his childhood was 
passed under Puritan influences. He had meagre 
book-learning, for before he was ten, his father took 
him from school to assist him in the shop; and as 
Ben cut wicks, filled dipping-moulds, and ran on 
errands, he was always either wishing that he might 
be a sailor, or wondering how he might secure an 
education. 

His father, observing his bookish turn of mind, 

41 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

apprenticed him at twelve to his brother James, and 
he learned easily to set types. He was even then 
an omnivorous reader, and every penny that he could 
spare was spent on literature, and there was no 
variety from which to choose. Of the six hundred 
books published during the first twelve years of his 
life, about five hundred were on religious subjects, 
and fifty more were almanacs. 

As far as we know, not a copy of Shakespeare had 
made its way into Boston — but all the same, Benja- 
min read everything that he could lay his hands upon. 
'* Plutarch's Lives " and " Pilgrim's Progress " spe- 
cially interested him; and prowling one day among 
such classical and theological works, he came across 
a copy of ** Spectator," really a novelty in the town. 

This was fortunate, for he was just trying to form 
his own style by studying the uses of common words 
rightly placed. 

He was delighted with the essays; read and re- 
read them; made outlines from them; and presently 
caught the trick of composition and ventured to write 
himself. His expression was not so light and grace- 
ful as that of Addison and Steele — but full of com- 
mon sense and blunt humour. 

In 1721, the brother started *' The New England 
Courant," and Benjamin, now fifteen, determined to 
become a contributor; so he stuck one of his own 
essays anonymously under the printing-house door. 
It was accepted, others followed, and people liked 

42 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

them. In short, the writer proved '* the brains " of 
the establishment. 

Perhaps he grew too wise for his proprietor 
brother but for some reason they quarrelled, and '' B. 
Franklin " as he briefly subscribed himself — when- 
ever he did sign his name — slipped away on a sloop 
bound for New York and continued his journey to 
Philadelphia. He reached the latter, dirty and hun- 
gry, his pockets stuffed out with shirts and stockings 
— and he had but just one '' Dutch dollar " with 
which to begin business. 

With a roll under each arm and eating a third, 
he walked up Market Street, and a girl standing on 
her father's stoop, laughed as she saw the runaway 
pass; and this was Elizabeth Read, his future wife. 

Franklin obtained work in a printer's office where 
he remained two years. Clever, industrious young 
fellow that he was, he even now attracted influential 
people. Sir William Keith, Governor of the Prov- 
ince, persuaded him to go to London in order to 
secure a good printing outfit, promising his patron- 
age; it was a fruitless errand — the promised letters 
were not sent, and Franklin soon found himself three 
thousand miles from home, without either money 
or friends. 

For eighteen months, he spent in London a kind 
of vagabond life as a journeyman-printer. Yet he 
held himself well and was so temperate that his 
companions nicknamed him ** The Water-Ameri- 

43 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

can "; but this knocking about proved fit preparation 
for a broad career. Wiser for his experience, he 
returned, in 1726, to Philadelphia which ever after 
was his home. 

A born printer, publisher, and editor, he began 
business by shrewdly advertising his proficiency in 
all three. He also opened a stationer's shop, and 
like the young Jonathan Edwards in spiritual mat- 
ters, he, too, drew some '' resolutions " in regard to 
managing the temporal affairs of his life, some of 
them being on temperance, silence, frugality, and in- 
dustry. The one on **resolve " is as follows: — 

" Resolve to perform what you ought, 
Perform without fail what you resolve." 

Franklin bought out *' The Pennsylvania Gazette,'^ 
the first American magazine. He was interested in 
science and began to show himself a man of affairs. 

In 1730, he married Elizabeth Read, and for 
many years she stood by him in the humble stationer's 
shop, aiding him by her frugality; and presently 
our forefather of American editors, publishers and 
printers, drew about him many prominent people. 
He was already outgrowing his environment, and 
transferring the literary centre from Boston to Phila- 
delphia. 

Think of some of the things that he did, that early 
converted this town into the foremost of American 
cities. He organised here the first regular fire and 

44 



1^ 



m 



WA 



K 



i 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



SAMUEL SEWALL 









m 



''^i'"'"-" ^^^^^^ i-^-^'i-^V. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

police forces of which our country could boast; in- 
vented the Franklin stove to give out more heat with 
less wood. He helped to establish hospitals. He 
formed a debating club called '* The Junta," the 
members of which kept their books at the rooms, and 
so easily out of it grew the first circulating library. 
He set on foot an academy, now the University of 
Pennsylvania ; and he always worked by the principle 
that if he wished a thing well done, he must do it 
himself. 

Then he started his '* Poor Richard's Almanac," 
which, as we shall later see, helped the Philadel- 
phians in forming regular, saving, and industrious 
habits. He became clerk of the General Assembly 
and postmaster of Philadelphia. 

Finally, in 1748, when he was forty-two years old, 
he retired from business; for he had gained a com- 
petence and desired more leisure — which '' leisure " 
he defined as " a time for doing something useful." 
His journalism and scientific investigations were al- 
ready giving him world-wide fame, and he wished 
to accomplish even greater results In both. 

As postmaster of Philadelphia, he had felt the 
necessity of a centralised system for all the colonies. 
To further his purpose, he travelled In a gig with 
his daughter Sallie throughout the *' Thirteen Colo- 
nies," and In 1755, was appointed Postmaster- 
General. 

In order to understand his later work as statesman 

45 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and diplomat, we must briefly glance at the growing 
unrest that confronted him. One result of the 
French and Indian War had been to teach the colo- 
nies a lesson of union against a common foe, and 
loyalty to England was at once giving place to 
patriotism. King George Third seemed to realise 
this and with high-handed measures tried to quell 
it — but he little understood the spirit of his sub- 
jects scattered along the shore beyond the wide 
sea. 

Franklin had been twice to England — first as a 
journeyman-printer, and in 1757, as an agent from 
Pennsylvania to settle a dispute with the heirs of 
William Penn; and now, in 1765, as foremost Amer- 
ican diplomat, he was sent again — this time to en- 
lighten the Mother Country about her duty to the 
rebellious " Thirteen " — by protesting against the 
Stamp Act. 

Somewhat later, we find our dignified advocate, 
standing before the court of the mightiest kingdom 
upon earth. What cared he for its pomp and pag- 
eantry as with calm demeanour and forceful argument 
he earnestly pleaded the cause of the colonies ! and 
his address made such an impression that the obnox- 
ious Stamp Act was repealed. 

Among other things that Franklin did in London 
was to publish anonymously a most clever essay: 
'' Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small 
One." This was an imaginary edict issued by the 

46 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

King of Prussia, in which by right of ancestry, he 
asserts a claim to tax England and make her laws. 
It was written that England might see herself from 
the American point of view. 

An amusing incident occurred in connection with 
this. Franklin, a little later, was visiting an Eng- 
lish lord — when the valet broke into the room, 
waving a newspaper as he excitedly exclaimed: 
'' Here's news for ye! Here's the King of Prussia 
claiming a right to this kingdom! " 

Franklin endeavoured by every persuasion to avert 
war, but this he could not accomplish, and naturally 
he made enemies and lost power beyond the seas. 
Dr. Johnson even pronounced him " a master mis- 
chief-maker," Finally despairing of future useful- 
ness, he sailed for home, reaching there at just about 
the time when the first guns were fired at Lexington 
and Concord. 

He was at once elected to the Revolutionary Con- 
gress, and on July Fourth, 1776, signed the Declara- 
tion of Independence; and when Harrison appealed 
for a unanimous vote in the Senate, it was Franklin 
who exclaimed: *' We must all hang together — or 
assuredly we shall all hang separately! " 

During his ten years' absence abroad, his wife had 
died, and his daughter Sallie had taken her place at 
the head of his household; but quiet days were not 
for him — yet another diplomatic mission awaited ; 
for though seventy years of age, he was sent as com- 

47 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

missioner to the court of France to win sympathy for 
our nation in her war with England. 

The French were delighted to receive him. To 
them, he was ** the personification of ' the rights of 
man ' " — the very principles which they were pre- 
paring to assert in their own Revolution. Franklin's 
demands were met — France generously aiding the 
colonies with both money and ships. Mirabeau 
styled Franklin ** The Genius that freed America"; 
and another called him '* a modern Solon." 

A friend of King Louis XVL and Queen Marie 
Antoinette, and surrounded by admiring courtiers, 
he — even at Versailles — maintained dignified sim- 
plicity; but he seemed by nature a patrician and 
greatly enjoyed court life. 

Popular enthusiasm for Franklin ran high! 
Everywhere he heard his proverbs repeated in 
French. Applauded in public, people gathered in 
the streets to see him pass; his face appeared alike in 
print-shops and in the boudoirs of court ladies. 
They wore bracelets and carried snuff-boxes adorned 
with his head, and discussed his merits about a 
Franklin stove in the salon. Poets rhymed sonnets 
in his praise; and when a medal was struck in his 
honour, the great Turgot wrote an inscription which 
translated reads: *' He has seized the lightning from^ 
Heaven and the sceptre from tyrants." 

And then at the close of the Revolutionary War, 
with his fellow-commissioners, Adams and Jay, he 

48 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

cordially conducted peace negotiations with England, 
and in 1783, signed the treaty, and when Thomas 
Jefferson was sent to France to replace him, Jefferson 
said: '' I may succeed but can never replace him." 

And the venerable diplomat returned and was wel- 
comed by triumph and celebration as '' The Father 
of Independence." He now becomes one of the 
framers and signers of the new Constitution. In- 
deed, his signature has been affixed to more of the 
early State compacts than that of any other man. 
It seemed as if no measure could be accomplished 
without his touch ! 

But with added honours, Franklin somehow grew 
more serious. He missed old companions and now 
at eighty years of age, felt the pains incident to in- 
firmity and disease, and he said one day: '' I seem 
to have intruded myself into the company of posterity 
when I ought to have been abed and asleep." 

And yet he w::s cheerful and in the intervals of 
suffering, read and wrote and told many stories. He 
approached death without fear, saying that as he 
had seen a good deal of this world, he felt a growing 
curiosity to be acquainted with some other — but he 
was not a religious man. 

He died at Philadelphia — the city of his love — 
on April seventeenth, 1790. Twenty thousand wit- 
nessed his burial ; and from that day to this, probably 
millions more have done him reverence as they have 
stood before ,the plain, unobtrusive slab that marks 

49 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

his resting-place in the old burying-ground in the 
heart of Philadelphia. 

When his death was announced, both the United 
States Congress and the French National Assembly 
went into mourning. A great man had fallen, and 
he still remains an electrical power in all the world. 

Franklin had little sympathy with the narrow 
creeds of the day, and yet two things deeply in- 
fluenced his life: an "Essay on Doing Good" by 
Cotton Mather, and Whitfield's rousing sermons. 
His conduct manifested the work side of faith. We 
might to-day call him " an apostle of social better- 
ment "; for he turned his attention to the present life 
as the early New Englander to the future. He ad- 
vised " honesty " — not because the Bible exhorts it 
— but because it " is the best policy." 

His character was many-sided. He is compared 
to Washington — for he did at the King's court what 
Washington did on the field. His humour and prac- 
tical sense resembled Lincoln's, but he lacked Lin- 
coln's spontaneity. Like Lincoln, he had no sys- 
tematic education. 

He loved fellowship, and his wit and anecdote 
made him always a welcome addition to any assem- 
bly. He had an excellent habit of investigating 
everything that came in his way, and so he was mas- 
ter of whatever he touched in science. 

His experiment was most valuable, in proving the 
identity of lightning and electricity — and he in- 

50 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

vented the lightning-rod. Every school-boy knows 
the story of '* the kite-flying." Indeed, his scientific 
essays and discoveries gave him world-wide fame. 
Both Harvard and Yale conferred honours upon 
him; England made him a Fellow of the Royal So- 
ciety; he was called in France, '' the foremost scien- 
tist '' — in Germany, *' the modern Prometheus." 
Dr. Franklin was very proud of his *' A.M." and 
" LL.D." 

He was not an author by profession and could not 
be noted as a very literary man, for he was entirely 
destitute of ideals and poetic genius. 

But he had a peculiar gift of combining clear ex- 
pression with a bit of wisdom to catch the reader's 
eye, and a keen insight into human nature. One has 
said of him: *' But seldom do the good notions of the 
world get jogged along by so sturdy and helpful a 
force as Benjamin Franklin." 

He was a charming letter-writer, and he early 
marked the important influence played by the alma- 
nac in the colonial home. Suspended by a string 
from the chimney-side, it was studied almost as much 
as the Bible and catechism. He finally resolved to 
write one; and beginning in 1732, for a quarter of a 
century, ** Poor Richard's Almanac " was printed 
yearly. 

** Richard Saunders, Philomath," was the nominal 
author; but Dr. Franklin always stood behind '' Rich- 
ard " and preached, like the proverbial schoolmaster, 

51 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

a continued sermon in diligence and thrift. He 
thus ministered to the needs of every day — for he 
told the people what to do and they did it ! 

Dr. Franklin in his modesty disclaimed much 
originality in the selection of these proverbs — but 
he had most apt skill in putting them. Read over 
and over, committed to memory and quoted, these 
maxims were heard — even in the Sunday's sermon 
— indeed, they were the common law of living. The 
*^ Almanac " promptly passed into circulation, and 
every issue was eagerly awaited not only in Phila- 
delphia but up and down the coast — as a " general 
intelligencer." 

The pioneer claimed it; it sped across the ocean 
to be published in Europe in several languages ; and 
all the twenty-five years, its annual sale was ten thou- 
sand copies; for apart from the calendar and absurd 
weather predictions, it was full of wisdom — not 
sparkling and elegant — but with whimsical glean- 
ings of observation on human nature by our first 
American humourist. 

As preface to the final copy in 1758, he gathered 
into a connected discourse many of the best proverbs 
and named it: *' Father Abraham's Visit to the Fair," 
or " The Way to Wealth." This is perhaps the 
most widely read of all, not only in our own land, 
but in European countries. 

And what wonder that one who held a brisk pen, 
and who lived from the day of the colonial diary 

52 



fll Mori. September hath xxxdays. 

^heje Li'/jes may be vend backward or forward. 

Joy, Mirth, Triumph, I do defic ; 

Deftroy me Death, fain would I die : 

Foiiorn am I, Love is exil'd, 

Scorn frniles thereat ; Hope is beguil'd ; 
Men banifh'd blifs, in Woe muft dwell, 
Then Joy, Mirth, Triumph ail farewell. 



9 

ic 
II 

12 
I? 

H 

16 

17 
18 

19 

20! 4 

21 

22 



2S 



London burnt. {2. 1 7]5 

i^Smd.f.^xm. J3 i- 5 

windy, 

flying clouds. 
7* rife 8 25 
Day ihorter 2 346 
warm, and 17 

yc,Q)% pleafant.'S 

5.§ir.iD.p.€^nn.9 

A T? 9 cool 9h'2 

O in ;± 



|5 
l5h rn 

27 



7 

2 
3 



4I with rain. 
5jDaysfhort. 2 4^ 
6jTwiligl)t I 24 
clouds. 

\6Sund.p CnnJ-h 

pleafant& 5 

7* fourh 2 58 U 
warm. {5 
St. jaattfjm. \6 
D©l7 ciull 'dh 
ajl 7Jchangeableweath7 

24;^p7.^unD.p.Cnn.8 

25' 2! wind with 
a(5" 5 Ac? 5 ^rain, 
27, 4I then clear 

28 5^6%^ again; 

29 <^St. .KaicIiaeL 

3€>j 7j7* fouth 2 20 



5 
5 

6 

r{6 



45 

46 

48 

50 

51 
52 

54 

55 
5^ 
5S 

59 
o 
I 
2 

4 
5 
7 
8 

10 
1 1 

5? 
14 
1^ 



7! Js we muft ac- 
7 New ) 2 day 
at 7 afr. 

count jor e'oery 
idle word^ fo we 

z) Ters 8 14 aft 
mufl for eiery 
rdle ftlence. 
Frft Quarter. 



5 

1 O /WV 

112; 

2 I 

16.6 

bid 
20,6 

nd 
26^6 

206 

1 1 1 7 6 
11^6 

1 f26^ 23 6 dwell with thee. 



Day T2 h.Iong 
Ecj.Day & Ni. 
>ters I 50 mo 
/ h^.'Tje nf"uer 
fern the Phih- 
Fuil® 16 day, 

at 6 astern . 
fophevs Stone 
th/it turm lead 
into Gold] hut 
I hanje known 
)rife 9 ;o aft 
^^the purfidit cf it 
16 <5Lan: Quarter. 
1 8 61 tttrn a Alans 
J 9 6 Gold into Lead. 



20 6 

21 6 

22 6 



>rifc I 30 m©. 
}^ever intreat 
M fewnnt fo 



PAGE FROM POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC, SEPTEMBER, 1738 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 

through the whole Revolutionary era, and was able 
to congratulate General George Washington as the 
first President of the United States, should naturally 
write a characteristic and captivating " Autobi- 
ography " ! 

Read his *' Almanac ''; appropriate the proverbs; 
ponder on *' The Whistle "; on " Turning the Grind- 
stone "; on " Father Abraham's Visit to the Fair "; 
indeed ponder his essays on many subjects; but if 
you would feel the perennial charm of his personal- 
ity, read his '' Autobiography." 

Begun in 177 1, it is left unfinished in 1788. 
It is as simple in style as *' Robinson Crusoe " or 
" Pilgrim's Progress," and In it Dr. Franklin treats 
himself with perfect frankness, without a thought of 
compliment. By his " Autobiography " he is most 
widely known, for it has been translated into nearly 
every civilised language. Curious as it seems, it was 
first published in French, and did not reach a correct 
English edition until 1868, when the Hon. John 
Bigelow, another famous American diplomat, ed- 
ited It with his own notes. 

Even if Dr. Franklin was not a literary man by 
profession, he certainly led others to an interest in 
literary subjects. We remember what Sidney Smith, 
the brilliant English wit, said one day to his 
daughter: '* I will disinherit you, if you do not ad- 
mire everything written by Dr. Franklin." 

But what he wrote was not a fraction of what he 

53 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

did, and one might write books and books and not 
tell it all. And in many cities over our broad land, 
we find memorials to Franklin, side by side with 
those to Washington and Lincoln. Specially in our 
National Capital, he is seen on the avenue, in the 
Congressional Library, in Statuary Hall, and in the 
White House; and everywhere his old home Phila- 
delphia records the honour which she pays to her 
adopted son ; in public park and building, in portrait 
and historic scene, in architecture and sculpture — 
look where one will — the renown of Dr. Franklin 
is perpetuated. 

SELECTIONS FROM "POOR RICHARD'S 
ALMANAC/' 

Many a little makes a mickle. 

Little strokes fell large oaks. 

A small leak will sink a great ship. 

The cat in gloves catches no mice. 

One to-day is worth two to-morrows. 

An empty sack cannot stand upright. 

Little boats should keep near shore. 

Three removes are as bad as a fire. 

Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. 

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in 
no other. 

Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at 
Easter. 

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for 
that's the stuff life is made of. 

God helps them that help themselves. 

54 



IX 

REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS 

So Franklin broke with old traditions and opened the 
door to a broader literature; and now we ask what 
was the part played by other more serious literary 
nation-builders. 

As the feeling in the colonies grew more and more 
foreign to England, times called for eloquent men 
— and they were ready! Fiery orators harangued, 
and their words fell upon eager minds. Balladists, 
wits, and prose-writers took up the liberty pen — 
not to win fame but freedom: so sword and voice 
and printed page worked together, until American 
independence and American literature were achieved! 

The Revolutionary literary period preceded, at- 
tended, and followed the Revolution. First there 
were the balladists, who in war-time play havoc with 
metre and rhyme and sing as they march. Their 
songs were of a monotonous type but spirited, too, 
and set to popular airs. Among them was Francis 
Hopkinson's humourous " Battle of the Kegs," which 
put the British in a ridiculous light, and the " Return 
to Camp," sung to " Yankee Doodle." 

And the ** Sons of Liberty " organised in New 
York, and planted and re-planted their liberty-poles, 

55 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

which were again and again cut down by the British ; 
and the " Daughters of Liberty *' served the " Sons *' 
with inspiring cups of tea. 

The following is one of thirteen stanzas of a ditty 
created by the Stamp Act : — 

" With the beasts of the wood we will ramble for food, 
And lodge in wild deserts and caves, 
And live poor as Job, on the skirts of the globe, 
Before well submit to be slaves!" 

Philip Freneau (1752-1832), was called "The 
Poet of the Revolution," because in either satiric or 
graceful stanza, he recklessly recorded nearly every 
great event, and his four volumes of political bur- 
lesque were most popular. Sometimes, too, he struck 
a gentler note, and several of his lyrics contain lines 
of beauty and delicacy as in the last stanza of his 
" Wild Honeysuckle " : — 

" From morning suns and evening dews, 
At first thy little being came; 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 

For when you die you are the same; 
The space between is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower/' 

Freneau's '' House of Night " and " Indian Bury- 
ing-Ground " are always remembered. 

There was, also, a group of Yale graduates of rare 
and varied gifts, who, at this time, would seek im- 

56 



REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS 

mortality by founding an expressive national litera- 
ture. Calling themselves *' The Hartford Wits/' 
they made this city their literary centre and indulged 
in extraordinary rhyme — both satiric and patriotic. 
The most famous of these " Wits " were John Trum- 
bull, Timothy Dwight, and Joel Barlow. 

John Trumbull (1750-1821), wrote " McFin- 
gal," a mock-heroic poem modelled after Butler's 
** Hudibras." It was published in detached parts 
during the war, or from 1775 to 1782. It is a strik- 
ing parody on the Tory, or peace party. 

In this, the great squire " McFingal," the Tory 
magistrate, whose 

** High descent our heralds trace 
In Ossian's famed Fingalian Race/' 

and who can storm 

" In true sublime of scarecrow style " — • 

makes an absurd harangue in favour of peace — • 
whereupon a fight ensues. He is tarred and 
feathered, and finally tied to a liberty-pole. 

*' McFingal " appeared at a propitious moment; 
even the rustic understood its import, and was im- 
pelled to rush into the ranks. Thirty editions fol- 
lowed one another, and Trumbull sprang into fame 
as " The Father of American Burlesque." 

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), while chaplain in 

57 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the army, composed his popular song '' Columbia," 
beginning : — 

" Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies/' 

> 

But this did not satisfy Dwight's ambition, for he 
believed that a true epic should mark the foundation 
of a literature. So seizing Pope's motto : — 

" Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts 
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of art," 

he struggled with holy themes until in 1785, he pro- 
duced *' The Conquest of Canaan," in eleven vol- 
umes. Cotton Mather, with his text " Be Short," 
could hardly approve its nine thousand six hundred 
and seventy-one lines ! However, this ambitious epic 
was dedicated to ** His Excellency, George Washing- 
ton, Esq., Commander, Saviour, and Benefactor of 
Mankind." How Dwight's grandfather, Dr. Jona- 
than Edwards, would have appreciated it! the Puri- 
tans revelled in it, comparing the writer to both 
Homer and Milton! 

Though this stately epic is almost unreadable now 
— there are some passages worthy of interest as sug- 
gestive of both Canaan and Connecticut. 

Patriot, classical scholar, theologian, celebrated 
President of Yale College — Dr. Timothy Dwight 
was a famous man — but not an epic poet. 

58 



REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS 

The third of the trio was Joel Barlow (1753- 
1812). After serving as chaplain in the war, he 
became a financier and diplomat. He, too, wrote 
patriotic songs, and also attempted a national epic 
that was to rival ** The Iliad." This was '* The 
Vision of Columbus" (1787), later "The Colum- 
biad." 

In this, Columbus, taken from prison, is led up to 
a *' Hill of Vision," where Hesper unfolds before 
him the history and future greatness of America. 
Stately and prodigious poem, it for a little electrified 
the people. They even named the guns for coast 
defence, *' Columbiad." 

Hawthorne later playfully suggested that " ' The 
Columbiad ' be set to music of artillery and 
thunder and lightning and become our national 
oratorio"; and in the new musical impulse that in- 
spires our land, in the twentieth century, possibly 
this may yet be accomplished. But our epic is not 
yet written/ 

Still later, in far-off Switzerland, Barlow wrote and 
dedicated to Lady Washington a less pretentious 
poem, " Hasty Pudding." This is a lament that 
foreigners may not enjoy 

" The sweets of hasty pudding, 
My morning incense and my evening meal " ; 

and its setting is a realistic picture of New England 

59 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

home life. '^ The Columbiad " is forgotten but 
" Hasty Pudding " is read to-day. 

These " Hartford Wits " were artijficial and imita- 
tive ; but they were an impulse towards — even if 
they were not the founders of- — a national litera- 
ture. 

And just now the English Tom Paine (1737- 
1809), plunged heart and soul into the cause. He 
was a successful pamphleteer, and pamphleteers did 
brave duty in these *' times that try men's souls/' as 
he wrote in his '' Crisis." And this pamphlet liter- 
ally was brought forward at every crisis. Read at 
the head of the troops, it quickened the marches ! 

No single effort was more powerful than " Com- 
mon Sense," published in 1776, and undoubtedly it 
hastened the '' Declaration of Independence." In 
this are the words: '' The same tyranny which drove 
the first emigrants from home pursues their descend- 
ants still." But Thomas Paine's splendid work for 
liberty was marred by his *' Age of Reason," which 
embodied an infidel belief.^ 

We next glance at the orators whose fearless, 
passionate eloquence made war literature; and among 
the most inspired of these remonstrants were Samuel 
Adams, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, and Patrick 
Henry. 

As there was no short-hand reporting in those days 
much that they said has come to us only in f ragment- 

60 



REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS 

ary passages; yet they are familiar to every school- 
boy and have won world-wide respect. 

Samuel Adams (177 2- 1803), aimed to keep the 
public aroused as '' Father of the Town-Meeting." 
He was always talking politics, and as a contributor 
to several papers his one topic was '' Freedom " ; 
and this '' Great New England Incendiary " did make 
George III. tremble upon his throne! 

James Otis (1725-1783), was *' The Silver- 
Tongued Orator," who, with well-modulated voice, 
piercing eye, and forceful manner, commanded wild 
applause. He wrote pamphlets on colonial rights; 
and it was after a five hours' address, that John 
Adams, the later President, called him *' a flame of 
fire," and added that '' then and there the child In- 
dependence was born." It seems strange but this 
'' Flame of Fire " met instantaneous death by a flash 
of lightning. 

And Josiah Quincy (1744-1775), leaped into the 
arena exclaiming : — 

" With the God of armies on our side, even the God who 
fought our fathers* battles, we fear not the hour of trial, 
though the hosts of our enemies should cover the field like 
locusts! if this be enthusiasm, we will live and die enthusi- 
asts! *' 

And there was Patrick Henry (1736-1799), " The 
Firebrand of Virginia." It is claimed that his artis- 
tic and fervid eloquence alone would have bound the 

61 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

colonies. In proof of this, we might quote from 
many addresses. But his resonant words, in 1775, 
before the Virginia Convention, can never be lost 
from history : — 

"Why stand we here idle? what is it that gentlemen 
wish? what would they have? is life so dear, or peace so 
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? 
Forbid it. Almighty God. I know not what course others 
may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death ! " 

And many other pre-Revolutionary utterances 
roused the patriots, not only in this crisis but in later 
ones — yet for want of space we may not quote them. 

But as we pause before the monument at North 
Bridge, Concord, where 

" The embattled farmers stood. 
And fired the shot heard round the world," 

we must gratefully recall the balladists and '' Liberty 
Boys" and "Hartford Wits"; and also give due 
honour to the orators, who heroically stood behind 
these " embattled farmers "1 



62 



X 

THE NATION-BUILDERS 

So poets sang their songs and orators fulminated with 
passionate speech, and as a result the Declaration of 
Independence was signed, the war was fought, the 
victory won. 

But Revolutionary singers and orators while they 
could inspire, could not organise liberty; and in 1783, 
thirteen obstinate independent little colonies waited 
to be welded into union. It was a critical period; 
and many prophesied that all would end in strife and 
anarchy, such as in an earlier age arose in Greece and 
Italy. 

But there came at once to the front real makers 
of a nation, splendidly endowed men of noble senti- 
ment, ready to do their part! Never since in the 
history of our country has such a group appeared. 
Among them were Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, 
Madison, Jay, and Washington. They did not 
write to gain renown — but to establish a strong, 
flexible government — and their splendid service is 
counted literature. 

Of these men, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 
the great Virginian, was a most cultivated scholar 
and advanced political thinker. Educated at Wil- 

63 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

iiam and Mary College, he became a scientist, lin- 
guist, educator, and reformer. Verily he did so 
many things well that he has sometimes been com- 
pared to Leonardo da Vinci. He was, however, not 
an orator but he held a reforming pen. 

He has left his '^ Notes on Virginia:" and a philo- 
sophical ''Autobiography"; but his most graceful 
literary monument is his correspondence, for he was 
a voluminous letter-writer. And this was the 
''Golden Age " of letters when they were written as 
carefully as if they were to be published; and the 
epistolary labours of Thomas Jefferson and other 
statesmen are very valuable as historic and literary 
records. Alas ! that in this day of cheap postage and 
rapid mails, this beautiful art of letter-writing is 
lost! 

TJbomas Jefferson bequeathed volumes and vol- 
umes to posterity but his masterpiece is the " Declara- 
tion of Independence," which Americans call " the 
most concise, logical, political document in the world." 
It is traced in brilliant rhetoric and proclaims splen- 
did faith in the people. Just the first sentence re- 
veals its character : — 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

And John Hancock expressed the spirit of the 

64 



THE NATION-BUILDERS 

signers when appending his signature, he ex- 
claimed : — 

*' I will write it large enough for George Third to 
read without spectacles ! '' 

And Jefferson was the first clear exponent of 
democracy. He was always fearful that a central 
government would overthrow individual rights. 
State — rather than United States — rights he vindi- 
cated — democracy rather than aristocracy. His 
Anti-Federalist Party bitterly opposed the Federal- 
ists led by Alexander Hamilton; and even now, 
Thomas Jefferson's belief in the capacity of the peo- 
ple for government, helps to mould public opinion. 

Jefferson was, in every sense, a leader. He or- 
ganised a movement In favour of religious freedom, 
and founded the University of Virginia. He was 
the diplomatic successor of Franklin in France, and 
the third President of the United States. He was a 
delightful personality. His home at Monticello was 
perhaps second only in interest to that of Mt. Vernon, 
and its charming hospitality was felt all over the land. 

Writer, educator, foreign minister, Anti-Federal- 
ist, Cabinet officer, and President — he ignored all 
when he wrote the inscription for his tombstone — 
the silent witness of his desire to be remembered as 
the author of the " Declaration." 

On the Fourth of July, 1826 — just fifty years to 
a day from the adoption of the Declaration — Jef- 
ferson died. And this was a fated day for Presi- 

65 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

dents; for John Adams, '' the great pillar which sup- 
ported it," also passed away, exclaiming just before 
the end: "This is the glorious Fourth — God bless 
it!*' 

On the slope of the Virginia mountains, at Monti- 
cello, there stands a monument upon which is in- 
scribed : — 

Here was buried 

Thomas Jefferson 

Author of the 

Declaration 

of 

American Independence 

of the 

Statute of Virginia 

for 

Religious Freedom 

and Father of the 

University of Virginia. 

Alexander Hamilton (1757-18 14), was an ardent 
Federalist, believing in a strong central government, 
and so as has been said the political opponent of 
Thomas Jefferson, the Anti-Federalist. Born in the 
West Indies, he was a precocious lad, who, at the 
age of seventeen, while a student at King's College 
(now Columbia), delivered in New York a Revolu- 
tionary address which stamped him as a remarkable 
youth, and his anonymous pamphlets also attracted 
much notice. 

66 



THE NATION-BUILDERS 

** The little lion " he was called. Small and dark 
with fine figure, a dignified carriage, an eye that 
flashed fire, and a winning personality — it was not 
many years before he became the foremost statesman 
of the day. He distinguished himself in battle, and 
was long enough on Washington's staff to prove his 
patriotism. He was also employed on secret, deli- 
cate missions. Owing to a creative genius for 
finance, he established a protective tariff and a bank- 
ing system, and in time was the first Secretary of the 
Treasury. 

In the chaos succeeding the Revolution, a Consti- 
tution had been moulded for the United States by the 
wisdom of the nation-builders — in which the clever- 
ness and force of Gouverneur Morris was very evi- 
dent: but every point in it was instinct with Hamil- 
ton's suggestion. 

And then the question arose — '' Should this Con- 
stitution be adopted?" and as in our own day, the 
country was split by political parties, and the Consti- 
tution was sharply attacked by Jefferson and his fol- 
lowers. 

Just at this juncture (178 7- 1788), there appeared 
In " The New York Independent Journal " a series 
of eighty-five essays entitled *' The Federalist." 
They were written by Jay, Madison, and Hamilton 
— and all over the one signature " Publius." They 
were addressed to the people of the State of New5 



67 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

York, urging them to adopt the Constitution that 
upheld 

** The Federal system which at once unites 
The 13 States and all the people's rights." 

John Jay (1745-18 29), the honoured Chief- Jus- 
tice of the United States, contributed five of these; 
James Madison, '' The Father of the Constitution," 
wrote twenty-nine, and on these is based his literary 
reputation ; and Hamilton, the third of the great trio, 
wrote fifty-one. 

All these essays were on profound themes and each 
IS marked with sincerity and dignity. Guizot says 
of those contributed by Madison : — 

" There is not one element of order, strength, or dura- 
bility in the Constitution which he did not powerfully con- 
tribute to introduce, and cause to be adopted.'' 

The result was achieved; for in 1790, the Consti- 
tution was accepted by the " Thirteen States," and 
thus national existence was firmly established. 

And '' The Federalist " still remains an authority 
on the principles of government; and for it we are 
indebted to Hamilton more than to any other man. 
Even his unswerving opposer, Jefferson, declared him 
*' The Colossus of the Federalists." And this chal- 
lenged Constitution has adapted itself to the growing 
conditions of our phenomenal government, and with 

68 



THE NATION-BUILDERS 

but few amendments still remains a monument to our 
'' Master Nation-Builder." 

Hamilton built his country home, " The Grange," 
on Harlem Heights, nine miles from the city. It 
was in the centre of a rolling region of field and 
forest and winding roads, with a glimpse beyond of 
silvery river and bay. Here, also, he planted thir- 
teen gum trees as symbolic of the thirteen original 
States. 

And it was on a fateful July morning, in 1804, 
that Hamilton left " The Grange " and crossed the 
Hudson to meet his death at the hands of Vice-Presi- 
dent Aaron Burr; and he was borne to his grave in 
Trinity churchyard, amid the splendour of a great 
pageant, '' The Order of Tammany," the most 
famous *' Order of the Cincinnati," Federalist and 
Anti-Federalist, were all in line, and behind the bier 
two black men robed in white led Hamilton's charger; 
and Gouverneur Morris gave the impassioned 
funeral oration in which he said: '' His sole subject 
of discussion was your freedom and your happi- 
ness. 

To-day, at Convent Avenue and One-Hundred and 
Forty-first Street, in the great city, we find " The 
Grange " in good preservation, used as the rectory of 
St. Luke's Church; and an apartment house covers 
the site of the thirteen colonial trees. They had lived 
for many years, an object of interest to sightseers. 

Downtown in Trinity churchyard, not far from- 

69 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Hamilton's old city home, we read on his tombstone 
the following inscription : — 

" Erected by the Corporation of Trinity Church, In tes- 
timony of their respect for 

The patriot of incorruptible integrity, 

The soldier of approved valor, 

The statesman of consummate wisdom, whose talents and 
virtues will be admired by a grateful posterity long after 
this marble shall have mouldered into dust.'* 

And other nation-builders there were, but only one 
more to whom we shall allude, and this is George 
Washington, '' The Father of his Country." He 
left, it Is true, but small mark upon the writings of 
his day, but his letters and documents manifest a 
pious and patriotic spirit. His public utterances 
were always dignified. 

In old '' Fraunce's Tavern," corner of Broad and 
Pearl Streets, New York, we visit the room where, 
in 1783, he bade farewell to his officers, saying In 
parting : — 

" With a heart full of love and gratitude, I most de- 
voutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and 
happy as your former ones have been glorious and honour- 
able." 

His noblest literary production, however, is his 
more famous " Farewell Address," Issued in Septem- 
ber, 1796, on his retirement from the Presidency* 

70 



THE NATION-BUILDERS 

It IS full of good advice and produced a profound 
sensation ; and we close this period of Revolutionary 
strife with its tranquil note : — 

" I have not only retired from all public employments, 
but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view 
the solitary walk, and tread the paths of private life, with a 
heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to 
be pleased with all; and this being the order of my march, 
I will move gently down the stream of life until I sleep 
with my Fathers/* 



"WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE? 

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate; 
Not cities fair, with spires and turrets crowned: 

No: — Men, high-minded men, 
With powers as far above dull brutes endued, 

In forest, brake, or den. 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude — 

Men who their duties know. 
Know too their rights, and knowing, dare maintain; 

Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain." 

— Alcaeus (tr. Sir William Jones). 



71 



XI 

GLANCES BACKWARD AND FORWARD 

We have considered the strivings of our colonial for- 
bears and our heroic nation-builders, and there are 
yet other forces which combined to hasten the Na- 
tional era that is just before us. 

For example, no sooner was the Revolutionary 
War over than patriotic Noah Webster exclaimed: 
** Let us seize the present moment and establish a 
national language"; and now, in 1783, he offered 
new literary implements in the form of a speller, 
grammar, and reader, which he called his " Gram- 
matical Institute " — and the trio accomplished most 
successful educational results all over the United 
States. The speller alone, with its tempting fables, 
succeeding ^* The New England Primer," has ap- 
pealed to more than sixty million young Americans. 

And this professor, lexicographer, lawyer, and 
writer, had the excellent habit of jotting down every 
word whose meaning was not clear, and he was so 
often unable to find a definition, that he determined 
to prepare a compendium of the whole Enblish lan- 
guage; and with careful labour he commenced a 
Herculean task, and in 1828, *' Webster's Diction- 
ary " was published. 

7^ 



GLANCES BACKWARD AND FORWARD 

Just about this time, too, the novel that had been 
in a formative state began to materialise — the novel 
that in early New England was such a forbidden 
pleasure that anybody guilty of enjoying one, might 
be read from the pulpit; and pious old President 
Dwight moralised on the great gulf fixed between the 
novel and the Bible, explaining how contact with the 
former must needs imperil the soul. 

For another reason, also, the American novel was 
belated, for before creative genius was born, England 
had been a perfect treasure-house of literary models 
suggestive for Americans ; and except De Foe, hardly 
an English novelist had appeared before the eight- 
eenth century trio — Richardson, Fielding and 
Smollett. There had been published in America a 
few silly, sentimental novels, written usually by 
women. 

But the first significant novels were those of 
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). A Phila- 
delphian, he attempted to study law, but he was so 
fascinated with literature that he made it a profes- 
sion. He tried both in Philadelphia and New York 
to establish two or three magazines. A mysterious, 
picturesque romancer, he loved complicated plots, 
filled with horror and mystery. Indeed, he much 
more enjoyed creating these in the novels that he 
wrote than the foolish, statuesque actors moving in 
them. 

The first one, ** Wieland," came out in 1798. To 

73 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

make his novels interesting, he realised the necessity 
of giving them local colouring. He took his reader 
into the out-door country, and the Indian is seen 
in the wilderness. He was a careful observer of 
Philadelphia life, one hundred years ago, and 
his ** Arthur Mervyn " gives a graphic descrip- 
tion of the ravages of the plague there; and thus 
Brown becomes our earliest preacher of sanitary 
reform. 

It seems strange that he accomplished so much 
with a dearth of literary companionship, and always 
hampered by ill health — ^his short consumptive 
career closing with thirty-seven years — but none 
may dispute his title, '' Father of the American 
Novel." 

Yet another influence to better literary work is 
found in the fact that strife is relaxed, and there 
is leisure to think and write on other subjects than 
politics. ** The Americans as a people are to take 
pride in a literature of their own, and to realise that 
a National literature is a National force." 

And our literary roll-call is hardly a hundred years 
old, so it seems as if it could not yet hold many mas- 
terpieces ; but like everything else in our land, litera- 
ture has made marvellous growth, and authors have 
grouped themselves according to congenial topics. 
Great cities have always proved literary centres ; and 
in time Plymouth and Boston and Philadelphia gave 
place to commercial New York. Here originated 

74 



GLANCES BACKWARD AND FORWARD 

much of that charming literature which graces the 
very commencement of the new era. 

The slender little bookcase begins to lengthen as 
the works of the Knickerbocker writers appear, and 
from New York are sent the first volumes that give 
American literature a home in Europe. And of the 
'' Knickerbocker Group " which claims our attention, 
no name is more widely known than that of Washing- 
ton Irving. 



75 



XII 

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

Just across William Street, from the oldest house in 
New York, built of little bricks brought from Hol- 
land, there stands to-day the magnificent Under- 
writers' Building, over the site where long ago stood 
the modest house in which Washington Irving first 
saw the light. He was the youngest of a large 
family, his birthday, April thirteenth, 1783, being 
just at the close of the Revolutionary War. 

His mother said: *' Washington's work is ended, 
the child shall be named for him ! " and " The Father 
of his Country " and " The Father of American Lit- 
erature " met just once. It was when little Irving 
was six years old that one day, walking with his nurse, 
they saw the procession escorting Washington to 
the Treasury — to take the oath of office as Presi- 
dent. 

His nurse, pushing through the enthusiastic crowd, 
exclaimed eagerly as she held forth her small charge : 
** Please your Honour, here's a bairn was named 
after you! " and George Washington, gently touching 
his head, bestowed a blessing upon his namesake. 

Like many another genius, Washington Irving 
hated school. He was, however, willing to scribble 

76 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

by the hour, and was always glad to trade essays for 
problems. Not being strong, his parents encouraged 
an out-of-door life — and how he loved to stroll! 

His quests began with the Battery, a region rich 
in whimsical lore; about the pier-heads he wandered 
— later with dog and gun through Westchester 
County, captivated with hill and wood and the witch- 
ery of Sleepy Hollow, intently listening to every 
recital of old Dutch legends. He sailed up the Hud- 
son, gathering folk-lore all the way; and as he looked 
and thought and listened he was creating a native 
vein, which afterwards he was to weave into scenes 
of romantic imaginings, to endow the banks of our 
American Rhine with priceless legends. 

He began to study law at sixteen, in Judge Hoff- 
man's office, but did not enjoy it — but he loved the 
play, which his Puritanical father regarded a wicked 
amusement; and often at night after family prayers 
he would climb down from his window, and joining 
his friend Paulding, would visit the old John Street 
Theatre. 

His two older brothers, after graduating at King's 
College, edited '* The Morning Chronicle," to which 
young Washington, at nineteen, contributed some 
sportive *' Jonathan Oldstyle " papers, that in a 
small degree satirised the town foibles. But he could 
not do much; for year by year he seemed to grow 
more consumptive, until when he was twenty-one, it 
was decided to send him abroad for his health — 

77 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and in those days this was accounted a grand tour! 

He wandered through England and on the Con- 
tinent ; saw Kemble and Mrs. SIddons ; listened to the 
famous conversationalist, Madame de Stael; and was 
received by literary men — his own charm of manner 
proving always contagious. He specially enjoyed 
Westminster Abbey, St. Peter's, and the Coliseum; 
and meeting Washington Allston in Rome, he re- 
solved that he, too, would be a painter — but in three 
days, he changed his mind. When he returned home 
after an absence of two years, his health was perfectly 
restored. 

Irving never seemed ambitious to enter upon a 
career, and though when admitted to the bar, he did 
hang out his shingle at Number 3, Wall Street (his 
brother John's house), he is not known to have tried 
a case. He loved society, saying that he preferred 
to be a champion at tea-parties. 

He now became secret partner in his brother's liter- 
ary ventures and with his friend Paulding began the 
droll and sparkling and somewhat youthful *' Sal- 
magundi " papers, to vex and charm the town — 
" Salmagundi," by the way meaning *' a mixture " 
or '' hash." They were written in Addison's style 
— for Irving, like Franklin, read deeply into Addi- 
son. 

The intention of the infallible editors was " to in- 
struct the young, inform the old, correct the town, 
and castigate the age." And they did it — and just 

78 




1! 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



J. FENIMORE COOPER 



in 

\ - 1 







■ a 



^;l 






FITZ-GREENE HALLOCK 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

at the full tide of success, they suddenly ceased! 
To-day these papers are a humourous reflection of 
New York manners, in 1708. 

In 1809, appeared Irving's *' Knickerbocker His- 
tory of New York," full of half-humourous, half-real 
scenes, descriptive of the city, from the beginning of 
the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty. Among 
the amusing characters are William the Testy of bril- 
liant achievement; Peter the Headstrong, with silver 
leg and brimstone-coloured breeches; the central 
figure being a caricature of Governor Wouter Van 
Twiller of unutterable ponderings, who represented 
the " Golden Age " of New Amsterdam history. 

This illustrious old gentleman was shut up in 
himself like an oyster. He seldom spoke, except in 
monosyllables — but then it was allowed that he 
rarely said a foolish thing. A model of majesty and 
lordly grandeur, he was formed as if moulded by the 
hand of some cunning Dutch statuary. 

He ate four meals a day, giving exactly one hour 
to each; smoked and doubted eight hours; slept the 
remaining twelve. In council, he presided with state 
and solemnity, instead of a sceptre, swaying a long 
Turkish pipe; and during any deliberations of im- 
portance, he would sometimes close his eyes for two 
hours at a time that he might not be disturbed by 
external objects. 

This *' Knickerbocker History," combining both 
fact and fancy, is called by many the first readable 

79 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

book in American literature. Indeed, some make its 
publication, in 1809, the true beginning of American 
literature. It was at once most popular, both here 
and abroad. All the world laughed — except the 
old Dutch burghers, who were insulted at the treat- 
ment of their ancestors ; but the humour was so gen- 
tle that even with them, amusement soon followed 
annoyance, and New York was most proud in being 
invested with traditions like those clinging to Old 
World cities. 

While engaged In this work, a crushing sorrow had 
come to the young author, in the death of Matilda, 
the daughter of Judge Hoffman, to whom he was en- 
gaged. He bore the blow like a man but he always 
mourned her and never married. He could not 
bear, in years to come, even to hear her name men- 
tioned, and always treasured her Bible and Prayer 
Book. Her steadfast friend, Rebecca Gratz, the 
beautiful Jewess, Irving later described so enthusi- 
astically to Scott that she became the '' Rebecca " of 
his '' Ivanhoe." 

Irving was devoted to women and little children, 
and with his gently modulated voice, delightful smile, 
and almost courtly manner, he was to them a winning 
personage. He was much sought for in society, be- 
cause he added unusual wit and geniality to conver- 
sation. One of his special admirers in Washington 
was Dolly Madison, whose picturesque ways, tactful 
sympathy, and extraordinary popularity, made her 

80 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

even as " Mistress of the White House " — just 
'' Dolly." 

Irving determined to take up arms in the War of 
18 12, and was appointed on the military staff of the 
governor of New York — but all was over, before 
he distinguished himself. In 18 15, he again went 
abroad to look after the interests of the firm of *' Irv- 
ing Bros.'' and as the writer of " The Knickerbocker 
History," he was even more delightfully received 
than before. He soon claimed Southey, Moore, 
Byron, Coleridge, Campbell, Rogers, Jeffrey and 
Scott, among his friends — and he flattered them by 
his responsive familiarity with their works. 

Three years later his firm failed; and now, for the 
first time thrown upon his own resources, his man- 
hood and genius came to the fore, and he determined 
to support his family by adopting literature as a 
profession, and he settled down in London to write 
— rapidly when the fit was upon him — and again 
waiting days for an inspiration. 

And in 1819-20, '' The Sketch Book " by '' Geof- 
frey Crayon, Gentleman," counted as Irving's best 
work, came out in numbers in pamphlet form. It 
contained short, gracefully told stories, with unique 
literary touch, in which the author gave free play to 
his humour; and perhaps the most famed of these 
sketches is *' Rip Van Winkle." 

This legend had existed in various European forms 
but Irving brought it to America. He peopled the 

81 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

rocky crags of the Catskills with mountain sprites, 
and there it was that the thriftless, lovable vagabond, 
Rip Van Winkle, watched Hendrik Hudson and his 
unruly crew play nine-pins, while he quaffed the magic 
liqueur that put him to sleep for fifty years. 

Another scene — and this is laid in that land of 
Sleepy Hollow, where the people were always doling 
out wild and wonderful legends ; — and sometimes in 
the golden pomp of an autumn day, we may yet 
imagine Ichabod Crane, jogging along upon choleric 
'^ Gunpowder," to win the heart of the country 
coquette, Katrina Van Tassel; or shudder at night as 
we recall the frenzied pedagogue encountering the 
*' Headless Horseman," and being hurled into the 
dust by the impact of the pumpkin I 

These two tales would have made "The Sketch 
Book " immortal, but there were many other 
sketches; one in which Irving represents the sad 
dreariness of Westminster Abbey — the " Empire of 
the Dead " — the beginning and end of human pomp 
and power. Again, he describes Stratford-on-Avon 
so delightfully that he sends thousands of literary 
pilgrims to visit Shakespeare^s home. 

Then there Is the English '' Christmas," in which 
we find the worthy old squire, the vast hall and laden 
board, the crackling fire and blazing logs — the ban- 
queting and minstrelsy. Others there are — but we 
must linger only to beg the student to take a leisure 
hour now and again, to enjoy quietly the vague and 

82 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

exquisite pictures portrayed in ** The Sketch Book." 
'' His ' Crayon,' I know by heart," said Byron. 
Sir Walter Scott read it aloud to his family till his 
sides were sore with laughter; and then in his quick 
appreciation, introduced Irving to his publisher? 
Murray, and the latter speedily brought it out — 
*' The Sketch Book." It was at once honoured on 
both sides the Atlantic and " Geoffrey Crayon " was 
popularised. " Bracebridge Hall," a glimpse of 
English country life, and '' The Traveller," soon fol- 
lowed. 

Spain has always possessed allurement for Ameri- 
cans; and in 1828, Irving went there to seek facts 
for a life of Columbus — and he was fortunate in 
finding illuminating documents that had been hidden 
away for many centuries. In his '' Life of Colum- 
bus," he presented the human side of the intrepid dis- 
coverer; but Irving could not do all things, and his 
historic accuracy has been questioned. His *' Con- 
quest of Granada," narrates the subjugation of the 
last Moors in Spain, by Ferdinand and Isabella. 
The romantic assaults and other brilliant achieve- 
ments of his knights recall vividly the mediaeval 
days. 

In those golden months, Irving lived within " The 
Alhambra," that wonderful palace where every 
mouldering stone held its chronicles. He raved over 
the exquisite architecture — he drew forth the rich 
legends. He revelled in its moonlight enchantment 

83 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

when the halls were Illumined with soft radiance — 
the orange and citron trees tipped with silver — the 
fountains sparkling in the moonbeams — and even 
the blush of the rose faintly visible; and with 
artistic perception, he wove the old tales into '' The 
Alhambra " — a veritable Spanish '' Sketch Book," 
instinct with Spanish sights and sounds. 

In 1829, Irving returned to London as secretary 
of legation; and among the honours conferred upon 
him was a medal at Oxford, of the " R. S. L." or 
'* Royal Society of Literature"; and he received it 
amid shouts of '' Diedrich Knickerbocker!" " Icha- 
bod Crane! " '' Rip Van Winkle! " 

In 1 83 1, after an absence of seventeen years, Irv- 
ing returned to his native land — and such an ovation 
as he received! A public dinner was tendered him 
at the City Hotel, in New York, where a little later, 
he presided over one given to Dickens, Irving could 
never bear to preside, and after presenting Dickens 
in the most abrupt way, he terminated with the aside : 
** IVe told you I should break down and I've done 
it!" 

He was amazed at the growth of New York City 
and at the expansion of the country; and under a 
commission to the Indian tribes west of the Missis- 
sippi, he made an extended trip, embodying his ex- 
periences in a *' Tour on the Prairies," and the de- 
scription of this land known only to the trapper is 
interesting reading to-day. To this period, also, be- 

84 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859); 

longs *' Astoria," arranged at the instance of his 
warm friend, Mr. John Jacob Astor, and giving, with 
other details, an account of the fur-trading settlement 
of the Astors in Oregon. 

And he bought " Sunnyside," at Tarrytown, a 
little farm on the banks of the Hudson not far from 
his loved Sleepy Hollow — with a snug and pictur- 
esque house *' as full of gables as Peter Stuyvesant's 
cocked hat." It was surrounded by ancient weather- 
vanes and soon was overrun with ivy from Melrose 
Abbey. At the right was Irving's library where he 
wrote his last books; at the left the dining-room with 
the old mahogany furniture, and from this room be- 
yond was a lovely view of the river. 

From here, ten years later, Irving was called by 
Daniel Webster — then Secretary of State under 
President Tyler — to become Minister to Spain, and 
he accepted; but Spain had lost its glamour, and his 
heart always yearned for '' Sunnyside." 

After four years, he went back there to spend his 
closing days amid the scenes of his early delight. 
Here his sister presided and the house " was well- 
stocked with nieces." It was *' the best house to 
which an old bachelor ever came "; he had '' but to 
walk in, hang up his hat, kiss his nieces, and take 
his seat in his elbow-chair for the remainder of his 
life." 

And in this intellectual " Mecca," he was visited 
by Paulding and Willis and Dr. Holmes and Prescott 

8S 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and Thackeray and Louis Napoleon and other celeb- 
rities; and they strolled under the sycamore trees 
and gazed away over the broad Tappan Zee, flecked 
with its tiny craft. 

Irving was annoyed when he heard that a railroad 
might be run along the bank of the Hudson right un- 
der his home, and sincerely hoped that the project 
might not be carried out; and he fully believed that if 
the Garden of Eden were then in existence, the " pro- 
gressive prospectors " would not hesitate to run a 
railroad straight through it; and he heartily wished 
-^ as others have done since — that he might have 
been born when the world was finished! But when 
all was completed, he yielded gracefully. Of course 
he did! for was he not the optimist that once said: 
** When I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I en- 
deavour to get a taste to suit my dinner ! " 

At " Sunnyside,'' Irving wrote his later sketches 
— one collection entitled " Wolfert's Roost " — and 
in 1849, his '* Life of Goldsmith"; and there was 
such sympathy between Irving's spirit and that of the 
gay, unthinking, struggling poet that the *' Life '' is 
winsome and lovely. Thackeray styles Irving '' The 
Goldsmith of our Age." 

Irving never forgot that George Washington had 
touched him when a child, and now in old age, he 
would touch the life of the great '* Father of his 
Country"; and with his "Life of Washington," he 
concludes his literary career. His genius not being 

86 







-.vr- 



■V}*- Kf^ ^ 

ST". 



.&'. 














O 
z 

I— 1 

> 

t— ( 

o 

h 
O 
Z 

S 

CO 

O 
O 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

adapted to the minute details and accuracy which such 
a record requires, it is not perhaps a historical suc- 
cess. But like Columbus, Washington in his hands 
becamie as Prescott says : — 

" Not a cold marble statue of a demi-god, but a being of 
flesh and blood like ourselves.*' 

And Irving wrote many other things ; yet we do not 
recall this '' Story King of the Hudson " by his nu- 
merous works — but by the " Knickerbocker His- 
tory,'' '' The Sketch Book," '' The Alhambra," and 
" The Life of Goldsmith." 

He was a familiar figure in the city of New York 
and was asked to become its mayor, and he was the 
first president of the Astor Library. More than 
once he was offered a position in the President's 
Cabinet, but his cherished aim was a life of letters, 
and it was thought that he made two hundred thou- 
sand dollars with his pen. As he approached his 
eightieth year, ill health and much pain came to him, 
so that he was forced to lay down his pen but not his 
cheerful spirit. 

He died on November twenty-eighth, 1859, and 
he had that very year completed his '' Life of Wash- 
ington." His funeral took place at Christ Church, 
Tarrytown, which for many years he had served as 
vestryman, and a large number from the guild of 
letters streamed by the altar to look upon his face; 
and at the close of a lovely Indian summer day, he 

87 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was borne by a great concourse of friends to Sleepy 
Hollow Cemetery — and ever since the elequent trib- 
ute of a well-worn path leads to the modest slab that 
marks his grave. 

Through the courtesy of the present owner, Wash- 
ington Irving's grand-nephew, the literary devotee 
may to-day visit the library at *' Sunnyside," entering 
it from the square stone porch. It is a highly inter- 
esting little room, and holds Irving's great writing- 
table, his chair and portraits as he left them. Here 
the walls are lined with bookcases, containing choice 
editions, many of them presented by the authors. 

The out-doors, too, has memorials of Irving, here 
is his river view and the broad meadow, the brook 
and the hill; here are the tall trees that he planted, 
where the '* birds in the fulness of their revelry " still 
" flutter and chirp and frolic." 

We visit the site of the old bridge, famed in goblin 
story, and watch the new one now under construction ; 
and in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, on a green knoll still 
shaded by trees, stands the haunted church with its 
antique Dutch weather-cocks. 

In Christ Church, we find Irving's pew carefully 
set apart in the Baptistery, and over it is a mural in- 
scription and coat-of-arms with three holly leaves — 
and it is interesting that he who loved legend could 
claim an emblazoned one. 

It appears that Irving's Scotch ancestors, the De 
Irvines, secreted Robert Bruce when fleeing from his 

88 



WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 

enemies. One of them became his cup-bearer and 
was hidden with him in a copse of holly ; and in mem- 
ory of his escape, Bruce adopted three holly leaves 
and the motto, " Sub sole, sub umbra, virens." In 
return for De Irvine's fidelity, Bruce later conferred 
upon him both the badge and Drum Castle — and 
the Irvings have retained the holly leaves. 

Irving did not try for great things. '' My writ- 
ings,'^ he said, *' may appear light and trifling in our 
country of philosophers and politicians, but if they 
possess merit in the class of literature to which they 
belong, it is all to which I aspire." 

" Jonathan Oldstyle " — ''Diedrich Knickerbocker " 
— '^ Geoffrey Crayon " — our beloved Washington 
Irving! Thackeray calls him: *' The first Ambassa- 
dor of Letters from the New World to the Old." 

Lowell says: — 

" But allow me to speak what I honestly feel, — 
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, 
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, 
The fine old English Gentleman simmer it well. 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain. 
Let it stand out-of-doors till a soul it receives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green 

leaves. 
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving, 
A name either English or Yankee, — just Irving." 

89 



XIII 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) 

Each early writer gave of his best to broaden our 
youthful literature: Charles Brockden Brown his 
crude, weird novels — Irving his storied sketches — 
and now Cooper is to bring his offering from both 
forest and ocean. 

He was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on the 
fifteenth of September, 1789, and while a mere baby, 
his father. Judge Cooper, who owned thousands of 
acres of land in Central New York, removed to the 
wilderness of Otsego Lake. Here he built *' Otsego 
Hall," a kind of feudal castle, over which he pre- 
sided like the baronial lord of old, parcelling out his 
estate to other settlers, and a village was cut out and 
named Cooperstown in his honour. 

And James, one of a family of twelve children, 
passed his boyhood on the edge of the vast, myste- 
rious forest which sheltered alike Indian and wild 
beast. Fearless, high-spirited, and impressionable, 
he learned to love the sounds of woods and water. 
He became familiar with wigwam life and the tricks 
of the trapper. Fond of adventure, rifle in hand he 
would spend whole days with the pioneers, studying 

90 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

the secrets of the woodland and the craft of the sav- 
age. 

Sometimes in the evenings he would listen to po- 
litical discussions between Federalist and Anti-Fed- 
eralist; for his father, Judge Cooper, was a Member 
of Congress and an ardent politician, and James al- 
ways formed an independent opinion. 

He went first to a village school and later to Al- 
bany to be tutored, and at thirteen entered Yale Col- 
lege, then under the leadership of President Dwight. 
The restraints of the college were not to the liking of 
such an unfettered youth, and in the third year he was 
dismissed for a boyish frolic. It was such a pity that 
he did not persevere until he had at least attained a 
thorough knowledge of English; for in maturer 
years, his ignorance in construction too often showed 
itself in careless literary work. 

Judge Cooper, now feeling that his son needed 
discipline, sent him into the navy, and in 1806, he 
shipped before the mast for a year's cruise. Later 
he was promoted to a lieutenancy and for a time 
served on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war, and was 
also stationed at Oswego; and in his four years' ex- 
perience, he learned much about ships and sailors, 
the Great Lakes, the sea and its imagery. 

And then the handsome young naval officer offered 
himself to Miss de Lancey of " Heathcote Hall," in 
Westchester County, and when she accepted him, he 
promptly resigned his commission. After their 

91 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

marriage, they lived in different homes — the first 
being dubbed *^ Closet Hall " from its diminutive 
size. In the second, a picturesque cottage, Cooper 
began his literary career, and this is associated with 
the following incident: 

One day while reading a stupid English novel 
aloud to his wife, he suddenly threw down the book, 
declaring that he could write a better one! His in- 
credulous wife playfully challenged him; he took up 
the challenge, and presently produced his *' Pre- 
caution." It was about English society, a subject 
of which he was perfectly ignorant — so it was weak 
and dull. 

But through doing it, he discovered his own possi- 
bilities and a friend encouraged him to try again — 
using precaution in selecting a theme with which he 
was familiar — and he tried and succeeded. The 
title of this second novel was " The Spy "; and the 
scene was laid in Westchester County where he had 
heard many tales of plundered farm and hamlet, of 
plot and counterplot and bloody strife in the Revolu- 
tionary War. 

Cooper was a frequent guest at ** Bedford House," 
the home of the Jays; and here one afternoon seated 
upon the piazza, he had grown greatly interested 
in the story of a grave, sagacious, and nameless pa- 
triot, who had served the Jays as a spy during the 
war. 

He took him for his hero; and for his occupation 

92 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

and appearance, he selected a versatile peddler, who, 
*' staff in hand and pack at back," frequently passed 
his door — and Harvey Birch, the faithful spy, as 
moulded by Cooper, was at once a master-spirit in 
fiction; and landmarks associated with Cooper's 
homes and with the war-lore of '' The Spy " are to- 
day recalled in the neighbourhood of Mamaroneck 
and New Rochelle. 

And if you would know with what different eyes 
Irving and Cooper looked out upon Westchester 
County scenes, read ^' The Legend of Sleepy Hol- 
low " and then '' The Spy." One spread over the 
land the halo of romance — the other developed 
local patriotism. 

" The Spy " had wide circulation not only in 
America and England, but was translated into for- 
eign languages; indeed, it was read even to Persia 
and the Holy Land, to Mexico and South America 
— and Cooper's surprise was unbounded. 

After his real entrance upon literary pursuits, he 
made his home in New York for three or four years. 
It was here that he started the noted " Bread and 
Cheese Club " — so called because in electing mem- 
bers, ** bread " was used for an affirmative and 
** cheese " for a negative vote. 

The deliberations were held in Washington Hall. 
Bryant, Halleck, Percival, and other well-known men 
belonged. Cooper was a conspicuous figure in 
*' The Den," a celebrated lounging-place for authors 

93 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

— " The Den " being a back room in Wiley's book- 
store in Wall Street. Cooper always numbered 
among his friends the best and most prominent citi- 
zens. 

In his next novel, '* The Pioneers," Cooper uses 
the wilderness as a background; and here we meet 
for the first time the primitive American Hawk 
Eye, or Natty Bumppo, a gentle, deliberate and 
manly child of Nature whom the Indians call 
Leather Stocking. It takes five tales to unfold 
his adventurous career, and through these he becomes 
one of the celebrated characters of fiction, " A 
Drama in Five Acts " Cooper termed them and as we 
read on, we grow very fond of this philosopher of 
the woods. 

We must not take the books in the order in which 
Cooper wrote them — for he buried and resuscitated 
Natty Bumppo, but this must be our sequence; 
'^The Deer Slayer"; *' Last of the Mohicans "; 
*' Pathfinder"; "Pioneers"; and "Prairie." 

And after " The Pioneers," he wrote " The 
Pilot." This was the outcome of a dispute about 
Scott's " Pirate " — Cooper insisting that Scott could 
have written a better sea-tale, if he had ever been a 
sailor; and he wrote " The Pilot " to prove his point, 
and in it he caught a graphic portraiture. Long 
Tom Coffin, the Nantucket whaler, sturdy, homely 
and full of action, we recognise as the gallant Revo- 
lutionary hero, John Paul Jones. The action is 

94 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

splendid — the tale savours of salty tang as had the 
forest tales, of spruce and hemlock. 

Cooper has sometimes been called " The Ameri- 
can Scott." It is true that both were story-tellers 
but Scott had more humour; he never lingered over 
side issues like Cooper, but went slowly and surely 
to the heart of his story; Cooper could never make 
people talk while Scott indulged in long conversa- 
tions ; Scott created many prominent characters while 
Cooper has but few. But after writing " The 
Pilot," the conservative " Edinburgh Review " an- 
nounced that the '' Empire of the Sea " had been con- 
ceded to Cooper by acclaim. 

In 1826, the second "Leather Stocking Tale,'* 
** The Last of the Mohicans," was published. Some 
consider this Cooper's masterpiece. Chingach- 
gook and his son Uncas are manly, noble Indians; 
they are true to life as far as they go, but they 
are not representative Indians — but Cooper had a 
right, if he chose, to leave out the uglier types of 
the race. 

In the same year, 1826, Cooper went abroad and 
remained seven years; and in Europe he wrote " The 
Prairie " — his most poetic of the *' Leather Stock- 
ing " series — " The Red Rover," and other fine 
sea-tales. And it was wonderful how his swift pop- 
ularity amazed the world ! for his books were at once 
published on both sides of the Atlantic — not only 
in English but in many languages: among others, 

95 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

French and German and Norwegian and Russian 
and Arabic and Persian. It is said that of all other 
American authors, only Mrs. Stowe with her '* Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " reached such celebrity. 

In 1833, Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, 
writes : — 

" In every city of Europe that I visited, the works of 
Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every 
book-shop. They are published as soon as he produces them 
in thirty-four different places. They have been seen by 
American travellers in the language of Turkey and Persia, 
in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan. 
England Is reading Irving — Europe Is reading Cooper/' 

It was the novelty of his subject that held all cap- 
tive, and for a time he had the field to himself; and 
it is disappointing to approach another side of 
Cooper's character which embittered his closing 
years, and rendered his later works unpopular. 
This was his controversial spirit. Of a forcible, im- 
petuous disposition, full of prejudice, he could never 
brook a hostile criticism. 

A fearless fighter, there was to him no neutral 
ground. Every critical speech about our young Re- 
public he attacked in word and writing, and on his 
return '* lectured his countrymen gratis"; for he 
liked not their manners, their love of gain, and fond- 
ness for boasting and admiration. So in his books 
he strayed away from the path of the story-teller to 

96 




1?^/ 



MONUMENT TO J. FENIMORE COOPER, COOPERSTOWN, N. Y. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

lash both Europe and Africa, and naturally made 
many enemies. 

In all this, he was most unjust to himself, for at 
heart he was a true patriot; he had a strong, kindly 
face and genial address — and was a lover of 
friends and home. Bryant says that " his character 
was like the bark of the cinnamon tree — a rough 
and astringent rind outside, and an intense sweet- 
ness within." 

And now for over half a century, critics have been 
busy with Cooper's fame. It must be granted that 
he did express too freely his prejudices; that his per- 
spective was bad; that he was deliberate even to 
tediousness; and that he wrote many books indiffer- 
ently rather than a few well. Indeed, some of them 
are never read, and Mark Twain has striven to prove 
that he cannot write a story; and Lowell, the irate 
censor, after honouring Natty Bumppo and Long 
Tom Coffin says: *' All his other men figures 
are clothes upon sticks." But allowing all this, 
we study an author from two points of view — 
his own day and ours — and Cooper is very much alive 
in his " Leather Stockings Tales " and a few of his 
sea-novels. 

Himself a lover of forest. Cooper was like a strap- 
ping woodsman who stuck his axe into a dense wood 
of tangling branches, and the clearing grew until he 
descried Chingachgook and Uncas and Leather 
Stocking; and through them ever since has been 

97 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

interpreted for us the spirit of the wilder- 
ness; or again Turner-like, Cooper has ventured far 
out over the stormy wave, where amid clang of the 
tempest, the man-of-war grapples with the whistling 
hulk of the enemy; and later writers have learned 
from him to spin sea-yarns. 

No: let the critics wage their war. Harvey 
Birch, Leather Stocking and Chingachgook and 
Uncas and Long Tom Coffin will live on and on in 
their wonderful world of action. 

We must read Cooper in a leisure mood and we 
must continue reading. Julian Hawthorne wisely 
remarks: "We proceed majestically from one stir- 
ring event to another, and though we never move 
faster than a contemplative walk, we know like the 
man on the way to the scaffold that nothing can hap- 
pen till we get there ! " 

Though the settings of the novels are in rough 
places, they are pure and patriotic books to give 
into the hands of youth and maiden. Every boy is 
himself a story-teller and an adventurer; and as gen- 
erations of boys have pored over Cooper's romantic 
dramas, they have given them most uncritical popu- 
larity. 

On Cooper's return from Europe, he mounted a 
house in Bleecker Street, New York City, with French 
furniture and French servants; but he finally went 
back to his ancestral home at Cooperstown for the 
rest of his life. It was a house of generous dimen- 

98 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

sions, set among stately elms and maples, and of a 
beautiful hospitality; and in the gathering twilight, 
he would pace up and down the great hall, pondering 
over chapters from his books — for his pen was 
never idle. 

On his death-bed he begged his family not to aid 
in any preparation of his life — for he wished the 
controversies forgotten. He died on the fourteenth 
of September, 185 1, and was buried in the neigh- 
bouring churchyard. 

Afterwards the homestead was burned; and the 
materials and furniture rescued from the ruins were 
used in the picturesque cottage of his gifted daugh- 
ter Susan. A bronze statue of the '' Indian 
Hunter," by J. Q. A. Ward — a facsimile of the one 
in Central Park — now stands on the site of " Otsego 
Hall." 

But Cooper seems yet to permeate the village, 
beautiful for situation. Whether we float upon its 
lake in its emerald setting, or tread the woodsy way 
— everywhere we find reminders of his genius; for 
street and inn and boat and brook and falls bear the 
name of some book or character evolved by him; 
and upon a sculptured shaft overlooking Otsego 
Lake, the rugged figure of Leather Stocking ap- 
pears — an emblem of fearless energy. 

Five months after Cooper's death, a commemora- 
tive meeting was held in New York. Daniel Web- 
ster — the representative statesman of the day — pre- 

99 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sided, and in his address suggested that Cooper's 
works, so truly patriotic and American, should find a 
place in every American library. Bryant, as very 
often on such occasions, was orator, and after speak- 
ing of Cooper's life and books, he said : — 

" Such are the works so widely read, and so universally 
admired in all zones of the globe, and by men of every kin- 
dred and every tongue; books which have made those who 
dwell in remote latitudes, wanderers in our forests and 
observers of our manners, and have inspired them all with 
an interest in our history," 



100 



XIV 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) 

Poetry is a divine gift and true poets see visions; 
and we may enter into special intimacy with these 
seers and prophets as their varied inspirations suit 
our varied moods. Thus far our tale has been most 
prosaic — but now the poetic dawn is breaking ^ — 
as with Irving, " Story King of the Hudson/' and 
Cooper, '' Novelist of Forest and Ocean," we asso- 
ciate William Cullen Bryant, " Father of American 
Song." 

The parents both traced their ancestry from May- 
flower Pilgrims — the mother directly from John 
Alden — and William Cullen, one of a family of 
seven children, was born at Cummington, Massachu- 
setts, November third, 1794. Some think that he 
was not an unusual child, but he knew his letters 
before he was two and at five could repeat Watts'a 
Hymns. 

In the old Puritan home, children brought up in 
the fear of God were expected to study the Bible, 
and he was so familiar with his own, that at nine 
he had turned the first chapter of Job into classical 
couplets. He caught his early, stately forms of ex- 
pression from the prayers that he heard in church 

lOI 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and at family worship. Poetic little Puritan that he 
was, he used one daring variation in his own inter- 
cessions '' that he might receive the gift of genius 
and write verses that should endure." 

The scholarly father was a country physician, and 
looked carefully after his puny boy's education. 
The mother did all the work for her family; she 
cooked and washed and ironed and spun, and one 
day ''made for Cullen a coatl " 

In the "St. Nicholas" of December, 1876, Bry- 
ant tells delightfully the story of his boyhood; and in 
it he emphasises the awe in which boys in that day 
held parents and all elderly persons, observing in 
their presence a hushed and subdued demeanour, this 
being specially marked towards ministers of the 
Gospel. 

Bryant's early education consisted in attendance at 
a district-school, and being tutored by two clergymen. 
Devoted to classical study, he in time became a fine 
linguist. He belonged to a family addicted to 
rhyming, and his own talent early blossomed into 
verse. At ten, short poems appeared in the news- 
paper. His knowledge of metre was caught from 
Pope's translation of '' The Iliad " ; and he told his 
friend Dana, years later, that when a copy of Words- 
worth's " Lyrical Ballads " fell into his hands, " a 
thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his 
heart — and the face of Nature of a sudden changed 
into a strange freshness and life." Indeed, no other 

102 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

American poet has equalled Bryant In boyhood 
achievement. 

We hear little of his youthful sports, but we do 
know that whenever he could *' steal an hour from 
study and care," he would wander in the woods; and 
he became the first laureate of the sky and forest and 
birds and brooks and meadows and granite hills of 
Western Massachusetts. Nearly every poem con- 
tains a bit of scenery. 

Even as a youth, the mysteries of life puzzled him, 
and he tried by communing with Nature to learn her 
secrets; and it was this tendency to brood over life 
as a preparation for death that led to his " Thana- 
topsis," or *' Glimpse of Death." This poem repre- 
sents a lofty religious philosophy, redolent of Puri- 
tan faith — a striking conception of time and eternity 
— ** a kind of requiem of the universe." 

It was five or six years after he wrote it that his 
father found it with another poem in a drawer, and 
in his paternal pride, unknown to his son, he started 
literally post-haste to Boston one hundred miles dis- 
tant to offer it to the publishers of " The North xAmer- 
ican Review"; and as Phillips, one of the editors, 
read it aloud to the others, one of them exclaimed: 

** Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon — no 
one on this side of the Atlantic could write such 
verses ! " But with *' Thanatopsis " true poetry had 
come to America. It was the soul utterance of a 
youth of seventeen — the most famous thing written 

103 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by one of that age in our land — and it is read to- 
day with reverent earnestness. 

Bryant was in Williams College for less than a 
year and then was honourably dismissed. He would 
have entered Yale, but Dr. Bryant was unable to pay 
tuition bills ; so regretfully his son took up the study 
of law, and worked very hard in order to support 
himself as soon as possible, and in 1815, he was ad- 
mitted to the bar. It was while practising in Great 
Barrlngton that he fell in love with Fanny Fairchild, 
'* Fairest of the rural maids! " and married her. 

Shortly after his marriage, a paper-covered book 
of forty-four pages, containing eight of Bryant's 
poems, was issued by the Cambridge Press. Among 
these was the one '' To a Waterfowl," embodying 
its lesson of faith, and " The Yellow Violet," one of 
the earliest tributes to an American flower; for Bry- 
ant was one of the first to announce in poetic way 
that the flowers and birds of America are unlike 
those of England. 

The little volume included, also, " The Entrance 
to a Wood," conveying the promise of calm to him 
who lingers in its quiet haunts; "The Ages," read 
before Harvard College; and " Thanatopsis." 

This book made him again prominent; but at the 
end of five years, he had realised from its sale but 
fourteen dollars and ninety-two cents. It is now 
most valuable as our first publication of creative 
poetry, and General James Grant Wilson tells us 

104 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

that not very long ago, he paid ten dollars for a sin- 
gle copy. 

Young Bryant felt a growing distaste for law, and 
an increasing love for literature; and in 1825, he 
made his way to New York, which was then a literary 
as well as commercial centre. He came as a kind of 
adventurer, and obtained employment on a short- 
lived periodical, and in four years was principal 
editor of *' The Evening Post." This position he 
held for over fifty years, never permitting journalism 
to interfere with his lyric muse. 

When we think that Bryant lived during the ad- 
ministration of nineteen Presidents — from Wash- 
ington to Hayes — and that during this time, the 
number of States increased from fifteen to thirty- 
eight, we may realise that editorial work on a lead- 
ing paper for half a century of that period was most 
arduous; specially as he felt obliged to infuse into 
" The Evening Post '* his Democratic principles, and 
further on, his equally ardent Republican ones. He 
was fond of travel and went abroad six times — 
sending to the paper descriptive letters and essays, 
later published in book form. 

His best work belongs to middle life. After some 
years, his son-in-law, Parke Godwin, and his inti- 
mate friend, Hon. John Bigelow — *' The Old Man 
Eloquent" — were associated with him on *' The 
Post," each being his affectionate and scholarly bio- 
grapher. 

105 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In regard to his friendships, it is a rare delight 
to listen to the reminiscences of General Wilson — 
himself a man of great literary charm — who 
enjoyed more or less intimacy with many of the 
*' Old Guard " of American authors, and also the 
eminent and gifted in other lands. Among his rec- 
ollections of Bryant is a story which the latter told 
him of his first coming to New York. Shortly after 
his arrival, he met Cooper, to whom he had been 
previously introduced; and Cooper invited him to 
dinner to meet Halleck adding, " I live at 345 
Greenwich Street." " Please put that down," said 
Bryant, '' or I shall forget the place." " Can't you 
remember ' 3 — 4 — 5 M " Cooper replied bluntly. 
Bryant did remember and for all the future, and the 
friendship made that day with Cooper and Halleck 
was severed only by death. To Halleck he was al- 
ways devoted. 

Among his other friends were Irving, Dana, 
Drake, Verplanck, and Willis. He had pleasure in 
Whitman but could not understand his poetry. 
Wordsworth was his English inspiration and Rogers's 
** breakfasts " his special delight. 

Hawthorne thus describes Bryant's appear- 
ance when he met him in Rome: *' He presented 
himself with a long white beard such as a palmer 
might have worn on the growth of a long pil- 
grimage." In all his friendships, there was a kind 
of Puritan veneer that never wore off; a quiet 

106 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

reserve and dignity seemed always to belong to 
him. 

Bryant had several homes in New York — the 
last at Twenty-four West Sixteenth Street, where he 
lived for twenty- four years — but a ruralist at heart, 
country life attracted him most. He bought the old 
homestead at Cummington, among the hills that he 
loved, and he returned to it year by year ; and in order 
to be nearer New York City, he purchased, in 1843, 
an estate at Roslyn, Long Island, and for thirty-five 
years, " Cedarmere " was his home. 

The house stands in charming grounds, overlook- 
ing a lovely lake : the library with two bay-windows, 
affording a view of woods and water — with ample 
bookcases, and fireplace set round with old Dutch 
tiles. This room was Bryant's castle! No journal- 
ist work was allowed to enter, for it was here that 
he donned his singing-robes. 

After his death, the homestead remained In the 
family, and several years ago, it was nearly destroyed 
by fire ; but appreciative hands restored what was left 
of his household goods, and they are to-day in the 
present mansion. 

It was at " Cedarmere," after the death of his 
wife, in 1865, and when he was over seventy, that 
Bryant made his monumental translation of ** The 
Iliad " and '' The Odyssey " ; and he did this in a 
Homeric spirit for he seemed to understand blank 
verse and " the rush of Epic song." He shows, 

107 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

also, true fidelity to the text, and many rank this the 
best metrical version of Homer in the language; 
and like Pope, he made it on the back of old papers 
and letters. 

And now to return to the creative works of our 
" out-of-door lover." He was reticent in verse, for 
although he lived to a good old. age, all his poems 
are contained in one volume — but the finest belong 
to his younger days. All are short — for to him a 
long poem was as impossible as a continued ecstasy. 

He revelled in solitude, and said that when he 
entered the forest, power seemed to come unbidden. 
His '' Forest Hymn," was breathed in the depths of 
the shady wood, amid the brotherhood of venerable 
trees — and while we '* meditate in these calm 
shades," we think only of his minor key; yet again 
his " Robert of Lincoln " is 

" Merrily swinging on briar and weed," 

singing 

" Bob-o'-link, bob-oMink, 
Spink, spank, spink.'* 

Sometimes Bryant voices the spirit of freedom; 
his note is decided but more restrained than Whit- 
tier's. We find it in his " Song of Marion's Men "; 
and in her hour of need, he sounds forth " Our 
Country's Call " ; and from him comes the famous 
quatrain of 'The Battle-Field " : — 

io8 







m 


' ■ 




J 


^ 


^B-- 






i 




' ^^^^ - 


1^^ 




^^B^^ 


^- 




^^- 




■■ p- 1 


IP" 


5. ^>%^.- 


Bli^fcli. ,.— 


iiiii^ 




,11.1 


\ 


Br^B*i-^'ff 


Bli 




■:'■■'■'■■'« 


►^ -^^^ 


'■^m 










s: ' Slgiipt: 






■ ■'lis 
; "..ill 


ilfiii**' 










l^^i 


i-::;r«i mmim- ■■:.:■ ^ is;**^^ 




' ■ :-4 






iPi:-Siiii|iiii' ^'?4fiii3iiS:ii 

iiiiliiP ' ■ 


iilli 


...»^. _J^ '■;■■; ' 




^^i<i^^mm!0mk' 







Herbert Adams, Sc. 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT MEMORIAL IN BRYANT PARK, 
NEW YORK CITY 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, — 
The eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
And dies among her worshippers.'* 

Then there is the bloom of summer in his verse; 
again 

" The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year " ; 

and yet again, the frosts of winter, with his unusual 
'' Little People of the Snow " : — 

" A joyous multitude, 
• •••••• 

Whirled in a merry dance to silvery sounds. 
That rang from cymbals of transparent ice. 
And ice-cups, quivering to the skilful touch 
Of little fingers." 

Some have called Bryant '' The American Words- 
worth." He, too, dwelt by a lake — and he caught 
a Wordsworthian inspiration. But Bryant appeals 
more to the intellect, while Wordsworth dwells in the 
heart of man. 

Bryant, with his deep-set eye, patriarchal beard 
— diminutive, erect and buoyant — was a striking 
personality in Broadway — going to and from the 
office of '' The Post." He was for many years the 
honoured President of '* The Century Club," and so 
its representative citizen, presenting to it many illus- 
trious visitors from abroad. He was keenly inter- 
ested in civic affairs and often presided as orator on 

109 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

commemorative occasions, as on the death of Cooper, 
Halleck, and Irving. 

He gained wealth as others may gain it by the 
thrift inculcated in '* Poor Richard^s Almanac." 
On his eightieth birthday, thousands of congratula- 
tory letters came to him from all over the land, and 
a loving-cup was presented him which may now be 
seen in the Metropolitan Museum. 

For this Nestor of counsel — this patriotic 
journalist and poet — serene and philosophic — 
worked on, '* Without haste, without rest," giving 
quietly and strongly of his best to the world; and 
yet this singer of '' an unfaltering trust " seemed 
constantly in his life to exemplify those lines from his 
'' Waiting by the Gate " : — 

" And in the sunshine streaming on quiet wood and lea, 
I stand and calmly wait till the hinges turn for me.'' 

Bryant expressed grateful appreciation for the 
artistic impulse which the Italians had given to New 
York, in presenting so many statues of their re- 
nowned men ; and he had profound sympathy for the 
life and work of the Revolutionist and statesman, 
Mazzini; — he who has been called *' the brain,'^ 
in connection with Garibaldi, *' the sword," Cavour, 
*' the genius," and Victor Emmanuel, '' the banner " 
— of " Italy free " 1 

Mazzini's bust was to be unveiled in Central Park 
and Bryant was invited to give the oration. It was 

no 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

a warm June day, and he stood with bared head. 
The address was scholarly and looking up into Maz- 
zini's face, he closed with these words : — 

" Image of the illustrious champion of civil and religious 
liberty, cast in enduring bronze to typify the imperishable 
renown of the original ! Remain for ages yet to come where 
we place thee, in this resort of millions; remain till the day 
shall dawn . . . when the rights and duties of human 
brotherhood shall be acknowledged by all the races of man- 
kind!" 

These were the last public words he was to speak: 
for at the close of the ceremonies, he was stricken by 
the heat of the sun and died, just a few days later, 
on the twelfth of June, 1878. The simple funeral 
took place at Roslyn, and village children dropped 
flowers into the grave. 

In 1883, "The Century Company," influenced by 
Hon. John Bigelow, appointed a committee to per- 
petuate the name of '' The Father of American 
Poetry," and two honours have been accorded him. 
The first of these was when 'VReservoir Square " be- 
came *^ Bryant Park"; then after the completion of 
the New York Public Library, there was placed on 
the esplanade, at the back of the palatial building, a 
statue of Bryant made by the sculptor, Herbert 
Adams. 

Like that of Mazzini, it is cast in enduring bronze. 
The hand holds a manuscript, suggestive of literary 
work. The poet gazes over his Park towards Irv- 

III 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ing, who, at the other end, is taking a view of his 
modern Knickerbocker city. The statue was un- 
veiled by Miss Frances Bryant Godwin, a great- 
granddaughter of the poet. Mr. Bigelow was not 
able to be present ; and it was most fitting that in his 
stead our optimistic philosopher and Nature-inter- 
preter, Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, should deliver 
the address. 

The base bears the following selection from one of 
Bryant's later poems — and how truly it characterises 
his stateliness of expression : — 

" Yet let no empty gust 
Of passionate feeling find utterance in thy lay, 

A blast that whirls the dust 
Along the howling street and dies away: 
Best feelings of calm and mighty sweep 
Like currents journeying through the windless deep." 

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN 

"Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew. 
And coloured with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night; 

Thou comest not when violets lean 
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen. 
Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown, 

112 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart. 
May look to heaven as I depart." 



— Bryant. 



TO A WATERFOWL 



"Whither midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way? 

• • • • •• • • * 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, — 
The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost.- 

• •••••••• 

Thou'rt gone! the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given. 

And shall not soon depart: 

He, who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight. 
In the lone way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright." — Bryant. 

113 



XV 

SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

Some of our earlier writers live to-day in one or 
two poems or songs, and in the following chapter we 
have strung together just a few of these inspiring 
verses. 

The first we seek in the '' Knickerbocker Group," 
that fashionable coterie of young men, who, with 
Irving as their centre, were all aspirants for literary 
fame. Among them were Paulding, Willis, Dana, 
Drake and Halleck, and it is from Drake and Hal- 
leck that we gather our memorials. Their first meet- 
ing was on this wise: They were standing on the 
Battery, New York, admiring a rainbow that 
spanned the heavens, and a mutual friend introduced 
them. 

Halleck, who was a great admirer of Campbell re- 
marked: *' It would be heaven to ride on that rain- 
bow and read Campbell." Drake liked the words, 
clasped his hand, and a *' David and Jonathan " 
friendship was formed only to be severed by Drake's 
early death. 

They called themselves " Croakers," and their 
" croaks " gave a pleasant picture of New York 
society in the first part of the nineteenth century — 

114 



SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

for they literally found *' fun in everything." 
" Croaker and Co." wrote '' The American Flag " — 
Drake all but the last four lines. 

Drake's reputation, however, rests on his " Cul- 
prit Fay," which grew out of a discussion with 
Cooper and Halleck — they insisting that a fairy 
touch could not be given to our American rivers. In 
three days Drake proved his point by his exquisite 
poem — its scene laid on the banks of the Hudson, 
the legendary abode of '' Rip Van Winkle." 

In this a fay has committed the crime of falling 
in love with a mortal, and part of his punishment is 
to light his lamp by the first spark of a shooting-star; 
and Drake's theme is saturated with fairy lore as 
we may feel in reading these lines : — 

" The winds are whist, and the owl is still ; 

The bat in the shelvy rock is hid ; 
And naught is heard on the lonely hill 
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill 

Of the gauze-winged katydid; 
And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, 

Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings. 
Ever a note of wail and woe, 

Till morning spreads her rosy wings. 
And earth and sky in her glances glow." 

Youthful, brilliant Drake — our ** American 
Keats " — was a born lyrist. He died at twenty-five 
and Halleck wrote in his memory : — 

115 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" Green be the turf above thee, 
Friend of my better days! 
None knew thee but to love thee, 
None named thee but to praise." 

And Halleck lived on. He, too, had a spark of 
genius yet he sang very little — but edited books of 
other authors. He was a great favourite, and came 
so prominently In touch with other literary men, find- 
ing such an affectionate biographer in General Wilson 
— that we are all familiar with his name. He was 
long an accountant for John Jacob Astor in New 
York, and on his death, the multi-millionaire left him 
a small estate ; and so " passing rich on forty pounds 
a year," he returned to his old home, Guilford, Con- 
necticut, where he cultivated his exquisite love for 
Nature. 

On the eightieth anniversary of his birth, in 1877, 
his friends unveiled to him a bronze statue in Central 
Park, New York — the first one there dedicated to 
an American poet; and on this occasion Whittier 
paid to his friend this just encomium: — 

** In common ways with common men, 
He served his race and time, 
As well as if his clerkly pen 
Had never danced to rhyme." 

Halleck's chief title to poetic fame rests on 
" Marco Bozzaris." Its subject is a Greek leader 

116 



SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

who fell, in 1823, in the war against Turkey for 
Greek independence. Americans at that time were 
interested not only in the struggle of brave little 
Greece, but in our own recently achieved liberty ; and 
how many boys from that day to this have emphasised 
the words : — 

" Strike — till the last armed foe expires; 
Strike — for your altars and your fires ; 
Strike — for the green graves of our sires; 
God — - and your native land ! " 

Certainly Drake's ode ^* The American Flag " 
and his ''Culprit Fay" and Halleck's "Marco 
Bozzaris '' are three of the immortal poems " that 
were not born to die! " 

And our flag has been the theme of yet nobler 
song; and the dilapidated ''Key Mansion" is still 
preserved in Georgetown, D. C, as the home of the 
author of our " Star-Spangled Banner." It was in 
1 8 14, during the British bombardment of Fort Mc- 
Henry that Francis Scott Key started out one morn- 
ing to attempt to secure the release of a friend, im- 
prisoned on one of the British ships. A truce boat 
was placed at his disposal, and on his arrival at the 
scene of war, Admiral Cockburn promised that a few 
hours later his friend should be free, but that in the 
meantime, he, too, must be detained ; for the Admiral 
was just then preparing to attack the fort and could 
not allow its defenders to be warned. 

J17 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The strain upon Key and his friend was tremen- 
dous — the fort being subjected to attack by both 
land and water — and Baltimore was surely doomed ! 
All night long they paced the deck, mid ** the rocket's 
red glare " and " bombs bursting in air." What 
was their thrill of joy, '' by the dawn's early light," 
in looking towards the fort to discover " that our 
flag was still there " ! 

And Key took from his pocket a bit of paper and 
then and there wrote the first stanza of *' The Star- 
Spangled Banner." The writer soon withdrew and 
it did not take long to complete the poem. It was set 
to an old English drinking-song, *' Anacreon in 
Heaven"; it was struck off in handbills, caught up 
from camp to camp, and became a precious memento 
to the soldier of the War of 1812. 

And does it still live? Listen every afternoon at 
sunset when the United States flag is lowered, from 
fort or flagship, and you shall hear its strains, sym- 
bolic always of '' the land of the free, and the home 
of the brave " ! If you would see Francis Scott 
Key's best monument, visit his tomb at Frederick, 
Maryland, for the lay ordains that for ever over it 
*' the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave." 

On the hill not far from the '^ Key Mansion " is 
Oak Knoll Cemetery, the resting-place of John How- 
ard Payne, the author of *' Home, Sweet Home." 
He was a successful actor and playwright, courted 
by Irving and other literary men for his intellectual 

118 



SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

gifts; and his finest tragedy '^ Brutus," Keene and 
Forest and Booth have all tried to immortalise; but 
his more studied works are now comparatively for- 
gotten, while just one lovely lyric enshrines him in 
the popular heart. 

Payne was born in New York City, but it was his 
childhood's home at picturesque East Hampton, 
Long Island, that gives origin to the poem. It was 
written abroad for his opera *' Clari, the Maid of 
Milan"; Henry Rowley Bishop added the music, 
and it was sung first, in 1823, at the Covent Garden 
Theatre, London. The words and music taken to- 
gether make the appeal in this homesick poem. 

About the time that Payne wrote the words his 
friends in America were receiving letters from him 
expressing his longing for home. He once said : — 

" The world has literally sung my song until every heart 
IS familiar with its melody, and yet I have been a wanderer 
since my boyhood." 

Far from country and friends, he was finally con- 
sul in Tunis, where he died in 1852. Years later, 
the Hon. William W. Corcoran, the Washington 
philanthropist, who, as a boy, had seen Payne act, de- 
termined to have his remains brought from Africa 
and interred in his home-land. They were met in 
Washington by a military escort, and accompanied 
by the President and his staff to the cemetery to the 
music of ** Home, Sweet Home." 

119 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Another song appeared, in 1832, that gained re- 
nown for its writer, Dr. Smith, a Baptist clergyman. 
This is '' My Country, 'tis of thee." It was used 
for the first time in Boston, at a children's '' Fourth 
of July" festival. Dr. Smith was a classmate at 
Harvard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and our remi- 
niscent poet at a class re-union thus summarises his 
friend's title to fame : — 

" And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith, 
Yale tried to conceal him by naming him Smith ; 
But he chanted a song for the brave and the free, 
Just read on his medal — * My Country of thee! ' " 

And there is another song which set to a German 
melody has been sung — with its passion and pathos 
* — all over the English-speaking world. Who does 
not know ** Ben Bolt "? It was written in 1843, ^Y 
Thomas Dunn English, a physician of Fort Lee, 
New Jersey. 

N. P. Willis, editor of " The New York Mirror,'' 
a paper run on a very small capital, had asked Dr. 
English to contribute a sea-poem, and he sat down 
to write ; but he drifted away from sea-thoughts into 
memories of his boyhood: " Sweet Alice " and " the 
old mill," ''the log-cabin" and "the school" in- 
truded themselves into the poem — and he was near- 
ing the end when he remembered Willis's request. 
So to fulfil his promise, in the very last line he 
apostrophises: " Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale! " 

Dr. English never made a penny out of the famous 

120 



SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

poem, and he sometimes almost resented its wide 
popularity as compared with that awarded to his 
more carefully prepared works. 

And just one Southern folk-song we must add to 
our list. This is " Dixie," composed by Daniel De- 
catur Emmett, or " Dan " Emmett, as he is usually 
called. A poor boy, he picked up enough education 
to be compositor in a printing-office; then he joined 
the army as a fifer, and later the circus, and in 1843, 
he organised in New York the " Virginia Minstrels," 
minstrelsy being at that time a novel form of enter- 
tainment, and Dan used to declare that when he 
blackened his face and donned his kinky white wig, 
he made the best old negro that ever lived. 

Later as a member of the '' Bryant Troupe," he 
was stage performer and wrote songs. He was 
specially successful in " walk-arounds " — a " walk- 
around " being a genuine bit of plantation life that 
always ends a show. On a September day, in 1859, 
Bryant told Emmett that a new " walk-around " was 
needed, and that he would give him two days in 
which to write it. That night he tried with his 
fiddle — but neither words nor tune would come! 
His wife encouraged him, promising to be his audi- 
ence the moment it was finished. 

The next day was bleak and dismal in New York. 
Emmett recalled his life as a circus performer, and 
how he enjoyed travelling over the *' Sunny South "; 
and how when they were at the North, the members 

121 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of the troupe would often say, " I wish I was in 
Dixie ! " Then burst a sudden idea — this was the 
line for him! He took his fiddle, and very soon 
words and tune had sung themselves into a jovial 
plantation melody. 

The next evening '' Away down South in Dixie! " 
was received with great applause, and its author 
was paid for it five hundred dollars. Soon it was 
heard from one end of the land to the other, and in 
1 86 1, it was flashed over the whole South as the Civil 
War lyric that led the soldiers to battle. 

On the outskirts of Mount Vernon, Ohio, old Dan 
Emmett spent the last days of his life. In a tiny 
house, with a little garden-patch, he earned his living 
principally by raising chickens. A kindly old man, 
he often might be seen sitting in the sun, reading his 
Bible. After his death, several interesting manu- 
scripts were found: — one entitled *' Emmett's 
Standard Drummer"; another a grace, in which he 
thanks the Lord " for this frugal meal and all other 
meals Thou hast permitted me to enjoy during my 
past existence." 

It has been said that when eighty years of age, he 
*' had a taste of what it is to be famous," and many 
an ovation was tendered him at the South. So it is 
hoped that this contented old minstrel was always 
happy in the thought that over the wide earth, 
tribute was constantly paid to his " walk-around " war- 
song — ''Dixie." 

122 



SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 

We have wandered far afield - — even from fairy- 
land to folk-song — and our excuse for linking the 
genius of a Drake and Halleck with patriotic airs and 
the song of Dan Emmett is, that all have presented 
to our literature some of its single, striking inspira- 
tions. 



123 



XVI 

JOHISP GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)' 

Whittier-Land nestles in the valley of the Merri- 
mac, from the granite hills, to where '' the lower 
river " seeks the ocean at Newburyport; and on " its 
broad, smooth current," Haverhill 

" overlooks on either hand 
A rich and many watered land." 

Three miles beyond this hill-city, a little back 
from the highway, stands the primitive Whittier 
homestead, hardly altered from the olden day. In 
it is shown the room where, on December seven- 
teenth, 1807, the '' Quaker-Poet " first saw the light. 
The mother's bedroom remains with linen and 
blankets woven by her own hand. 

The great fireplace in the kitchen is almost as 
large as a modern kitchenette. In this swings " the 
crane and pendent trammels," and never has New 
England kitchen been so hallowed by poetic touch. 
For it was in this " old, rude-furnished room," 
many years after Whittier had left his early home, 
that he stretched '* The hands of memory forth " 
and gathered the household; and as the firelight 
illumined their faces, he threw upon the screen the 

124 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

picture of the family group, and this he presented to 
the world in ** Snow-Bound," a perfect poem of New 
England winter life. 

Let us glance at the picture. Here is the father, 
** Prompt, decisive man"; the mother rehearsing 

"The story of her early days;" 

Aunt Mercy — 

" The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate"; 

and story-telling Uncle Moses, who though 

". . • innocent of books, 
Was rich in lore of field and brooks." 

And among the other faces is that of the older sister 
who has learned ** The secret of self-sacrifice "; and 
of the '' youngest " and '' dearest," who 

". . . let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean." 

The picture is as realistic in word as the Dutch artist 
could have painted it with his brush — and it has 
transformed the Haverhill kitchen into a pilgrim's 
shrine. 

Lingering outside the homestead, many poems are 
recalled. Here was laid the scene of *' Telling the 
Bees "; the bridle-post; the well with its long sweep; 

125 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the brook; the stone-wall upon which once sat a 
"Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!" Near by is 
the meadow where Maud MuUer met the judge; a 
short distance up a narrow road stands the cottage 
where Lydia Ayer, the heroine of '* In School-days," 
lived her brief life of seventeen years. Here are 
treasured her school-books, and each is inscribed in 
tiny, faded writing: ''Lydia Ayer — her book." 

Across the road, beyond the Whittier elm, a tablet 
marks the site of '' the school-house by the road," 
and 

" Around it still the sumachs grow, 
And blackberry-vines are running." 

Local tradition has it that John and Lydia always 
walked to school together; and we do know that 
forty years later, John tenderly remembered the 
" sweet child-face " of the little maiden who hated 
" to go above " him. 

The literary elements associated with Whittier's 
childhood home, apart from the district-school, were 
very few. There were the Bible and " Pilgrim's 
Progress," and some other saintly books, and the 
Quaker-meeting. But something interesting hap- 
pened when the lad was fourteen — the kind of 
thing that often happens to a youthful genius and 
changes the whole current of life — a copy of Burns's 
poems fell into his hands. He read and re-read un- 

126 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

til the " Ayrshire Ploughman,'' who could weave a 
poem from a " tiny field mousie," or a " Wee modest 
crimson-tipped flower," had cast, by the magic of his 
lyric song, a spell over the rugged farmer lad — 
for he even sung into his heart the art of transfigur- 
ing daily life. 

And as the boy worked on, and carried his lessons 
and scribbled away, a new spirit was in him — and 
his own song burst forth — and the early twitter was 
pleasant to hear on the dreary New England coast; 
and the song grew louder and more insistent, for he 
kept on singing for sixty years, and sometimes he 
has even been honoured by being called '' The Burns 
of New England." 

And when he was seventeen, another thing hap- 
pened. One day when he was helping his father 
mend the fence, the postman as he rode past tossed 
over the newspaper. Whittier opened it and dis- 
covered one of his own poems in print. He stared 
again and again at the lines, but for joy and surprise 
could not read a word. The practical father, seeing 
him idle, told him to put up the paper and go on with 
his work. 

His sister, it appears, had been his first literary 
agent, and unknown to him, had sent the manuscript 
to William Lloyd Garrison, editor of '' The New- 
buryport Free Press." We linger over these hap- 
penings because they were big with import. 

A little later, Mr. Garrison, having received more 

127 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of the youthful poet's rhymes, visited the farm and 
urged Mr. Whittier to give his son an education; 
but all he could do was to allow him a few terms 
at the Haverhill Academy, and the youth had to teach 
and keep accounts, and make slippers for eight cents 
a pair, to pay his tuition. 

Mr. Garrison, '' The Lion-hearted Champion of 
Freedom," next interested his young friend In the 
anti-slavery question that for many years before the 
Civil War agitated the country; and the poet of 
'* brotherly love'' was born with such a spirit of 
** brotherly rights '' that he threw himself, heart and 
soul, into the conflict. 

It was in 1833, ^^^t ^^ openly consecrated himself 
to the cause to which he gave the best years of his 
life. In these times of turmoil, he drifted into 
journalism in Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, and 
Washington. He became secretary and journalist 
for the " Anti-Slavery Society," in Philadelphia. 
Mis office was sacked and burned, and here and in 
other cities, he was several times hounded and 
mobbed. 

It mattered not to him ! His " Voices of Free- 
dom " rang out like trumpet-calls ! His finest de- 
nunciation was '' Ichabod." This was an impress- 
ive lament over the fallen greatness of Daniel Web- 
ster, for his attempted compromise with the South, 
In regard to slavery. But thirty years afterwards, 
Whittier may have repented his impetuous words; 

128 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

for in his *' Lost Occasion," he represents Webster 
as trying to save the Union without a struggle, and 
he mourns the too early death of one 

" Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove^s own brow." 

Lowell, who was with Whittier in sentiment, could 
not refrain from referring to him in his " Fable for 
Critics " as 

" Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in 
To the brain of the rough old Goliath of sin." 

But Lowell said, also, another thing of Whittier that 

" Whenever occasion offered, some burning lyric of his 
flew across the country like the fiery cross to warn and 
rally!" 

Whittier, however, lost friends and literary in- 
fluence through his *' Voices of Freedom ''; and yet 
he said: — 



"I set a higher value on my name as appended to the 
Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of 
my works." 

And the martial Quaker worked on with lyre and 
pen until that day when in the meeting-house he 

129 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

heard the glad bells ring out the news of the passage 
of the Constitutional Amendment, abolishing slavery, 
and he sat right down and wrote his '* Laus Deo I " 
beginning : — 

"It IS done! 
Clang of bell and roar of gun' 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! '* 

And now freedom achieved, the blast of the war- 
trumpeter changed into a calm, sweet song, and by 
degrees it broadened into fuller, richer tones. 

After his father's death, Whittier sold the ances- 
tral farm at Haverhill, and bought a house for his 
mother and sister at Amesbury, where they might 
be near the meeting-house. Though Whittier never 
married, he loved his fireside, and was never further 
from it than Washington. Once perhaps he might 
have been elected to Congress but in his diffidence, 
he withdrew his candidacy. 

He was poor until his masterpiece *' Snow-Bound " 
appeared, in 1866, and this — his heart inspiration 
— brought him large returns. The world read and 
honoured this charming winter idyl. It was in the 
same year that Harvard College bestowed upon him 
an LL.D. 

His summer idyl, ** The Tent on the Beach," soon 

130 




CO 

CO 

< 

PQ 

CO 



H 
H 

w 
w 
c4 
O 

O 

o 

o 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

followed. This is a story-book, in form like Long- 
fellow's *' Tales of a Wayside Inn "; and to enjoy it 
fully we must pitch our tent on Salisbury Beach, '* be- 
side the waves, where the sea winds blow," and where 

" The mighty deep expands 
From Its white line of gleaming sands." 

Open Whittier's poems anywhere, one is attracted 
by verse or legend or ballad, and it is difficult to sug- 
gest how best to read into his works. He always 
tells a story easily so that the plot is never strained. 
Ever in sympathy with the sons of toil, there are 
homely songs of labour, appealing to the lumberman 
or fisherman or shoemaker. 

How he revels in an autumn scene as in " The 
Pumpkin " when 

" On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth 
Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, 
• ••■••••• 

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? 
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkln-ple ? " 

Of his Indian legends, the aboriginal story, *' The 
Bridal of Pennacook '' — its scene laid on the banks 
of the classic Merrimac — is perhaps the finest. 

In his portrayal of colonial life, a most striking 
poem is '* Skipper Iresoh's Ride ": — 

131 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" The strangest ride that ever was sped 
Was Ireson's, out of Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried on a cart 
By the women of Marblehead." 

A pleasing contrast is found in " Amy Wentworth," 
or *' The Countess," or in the Christian '' Swan-Song 
of Parson Avery." The Quaker maiden, Cassandra 
Southwick, the witch's daughter, Mabel Martin, and 
Barbara Freitchie — with her lesson of defiant pat- 
riotism already voiced by generations of New Eng- 
land school-children — are all familiar pictures. 
Many regard *' The Pipes at Lucknow " as Whit- 
tier's lyrical masterpiece. His religious creed often 
finds beautiful expression, specially in that stanza in 
*' The Eternal Goodness," where he writes: — 

'* I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms In air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care." 

Whittier's prose does not equal his poetry — con- 
sisting mostly of letters, criticisms, and editorials. 
His only extensive work was " Margaret Smith's 
Journal." This is a quaint description of her visit 
to New England, in 1678. She embodies this in 
letters which she sends to her betrothed in England. 
The whole is a realistic account of the old Puritan 

132 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

age. Whittier was an admirer of the saintly old 
Quaker, John Woolman, and he was happy in edit- 
ing his ** Journal." 

Whittier once said: "I never had any methods. 
When I felt like it, I wrote. I had neither health 
nor patience to work over it afterwards." He had 
his faults; he often wrote too diffusely, unequally, 
and carelessly, and there are many lines and stanzas 
that might better have been omitted; but even if he 
wrote very much, many lines will live always. 

He was the " Poet of New England " — its sights 
and sounds and loves and hopes — but his verse was 
almost too local to be appreciated abroad. Richard- 
son calls him : — 

" The laureate of the ocean beach, the inland lake, the 
little wood-flower, and the divine sky''; 

and Holmes says : — 

" Our stern New England hills and vales and streams, 
Thy tuneful idyls make them all thine own." 

Whittier came of sturdy New England stock but 
he was never very robust, and his later years were 
passed quietly in his Amesbury home, and in long 
visits to friends — and several households to-day 
recall with pleasure their honoured guest. His 
neighbours were devoted to him, because as one said: 
" He talks just like common folks," He never 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

entered a theatre but was a regular attendant at 
Quaker-meeting, conforming his garb and manner 
to Quaker simplicity. *' A shy, peace-loving man," 
he called himself. 

For literary companionship, he sometimes sought 
Mrs. Field's parlour gatherings in Boston, and be- 
longed to literary clubs with other New England 
poets. His old age was enriched by many friend- 
ships. Among those with whom he came in touch 
were Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Bryant, Bayard 
Taylor, Curtis, Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Spofford, and 
Garibaldi. To some of these he wrote personal 
poems, and they, if they were able, returned the com- 
pliment. 

It was while Whittler was sojourning with friends 
at Oak Knolls, that he died, on the seventh of Sep- 
tember, 1892. His last words — typical of his 
creed — were: *' My love to the world." A great 
concourse gathered in the sunny orchard back of the 
Amesbury house to attend the funeral service: even 
boys were seated on the fence and in the apple-trees. 
Edmund Clarence Stedman paid a glowing tribute 
to the Quaker bard. He was laid in the burying- 
ground on the hillside; and on his tombstone is 
engraved just his name**— and the words from 
Oliver Wendell Holmes : '* Here Whittier lies.'' 

There are two ways, in which one may become 
familiar with the personality of this loved poet. One 
is to read his life as written by himself in his various 

134 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

poems, beginning with " The Barefoot Boy/' and 
following on through 

" The grand historic years 
When liberty had need of work and word '* ; * 

and even to the calmer, wiser days when as " A man 
grey grown," we may follow him along his '* River 
•Path," where 

A long, slant splendour downward flowed 
• •••••• 

And borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side ! " 

The other most charming way is, in Whittieresque 
spirit, to visit " Whittier-Land." All along the 
road from Haverhill to Amesbury, and off to where 
the ocean breaks on Salisbury and the Hampton 
Beaches, there are bits of landscape immortalised in 
the poems of " The Wood-Thrush of Essex." 

Mr. and Mrs. Pickard — the latter a favourite 
niece of the poet, who lived with him during the last 
years of his life — still occupy the Amesbury house. 
Mr. Pickard is the author not only of " Life and 
Letters of J. G. Whittier," but of " Whittier-Land," 
which contains many anecdotes and poems not before 
made public; and it is indeed delightful to hear Mr. 
Pickard' s gentle and humourous reminiscences from 
his own lips. 

135 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The house is a place In which one cannot fail to 
he reminiscent, for hall and parlour and garden-room 
are full of associations. Here Whittier received 
many men and women famed in letters. Here is 
the mother's picture; the desk upon which "Snow- 
Bound" was written; an album presented to the 
poet on his eightieth birthday, containing signatures 
of all the members of Congress and many other 
notable men. There are engravings and books and 
chair and lounge that he enjoyed — even coat and 
hat and boots — and as we look and listen all 
seem but one living monument inscribed with Whit- 
tier's name. 

Whittier was perhaps not a great man, but who 
would not be satisfied with such a 

" Lifelong record closed without a stain — 
A blameless memory shrined in deathless song." 

SELECTED FROM POEM ON " BURNS " 

"Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! 
The moorland flower and peasant! 
How, at their mention, memory turns 
Her pages old and pleasant! 

• • • « • • * 

I call to mind the summer day. 

The early harvest mowing, 
The sky with sun and clouds at play, 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 



136 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 

I heard the squirrels leaping, 
The good dog listened while I read, 

And wagged his tail in keeping. 

• ••••• 

I watched him while in sportive mood 

I read * The Twa Dogs* ' story. 

And half believed he understood 

The poet's allegory. 

• • • • • 

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills. 

The sweetbrier and the clover; 
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 

Their wood-hymns chanting over. 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. 

• ••••• 

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 

To * Bonny Doon ' but tarry; 
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme. 

But spare his Highland Mary! " 



fVhittier, 



THE RIVER PATH 

" No bird-song floated down the hill. 
The tangled bank below was still ; 

No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 
137 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew; 

For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

But on the river's farther side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

With us the damp, the chill, the gloom: 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom; 

While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between. 

' From out the darkness where we trod, 
We gazed upon those hills of God, 

Whose light seemed not of moon or sun, 
We spake not, but our thought was one. 

We paused, as if from that bright shore 
Beckoned our dear ones gone before; 

And stilled our beating hearts to hear 
The voices lost to mortal ear! 

Sudden our pathway turned from night; 
The hills swung open to the light; 



138 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Through their green gates the sunshine showed, 
A long, slant splendour downward flowed. 

Down glade and glen, and bank it rolled; 
It bridged the shaded stream with gold; 

And, borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side! 

" So,'* prayed we, " when our feet draw near, 
The river dark, with mortal fear, 

" And the night cometh chill with dew, 
O Father! let thy light break through! 

" So let the hills of doubt divide, 
So bridge with faith the sunless tide! 

" So let the eyes that fail on earth 
On thy eternal hills look forth; 

" And in thy beckoning angels know 
The dear ones whom we loved below ! '* 

— Whittier. 



139 



XVII 

WAR LITERATURE 

One has well said : — 

" Many's the thing liberty has got to do before we have 
achieved liberty. Some day w^ell make that wrord real — 
give it universal meaning ! " 

Our country won Its independence through its 
makers of freedom; but as we have seen, at the 
very outset of United States History, there were 
two perfectly distinct ideas of government: one 
believing in a strong central power at Wash- 
ington — the other in rights of the independent 
States; one the Federalist or Whig party — the 
other, the Anti- Federalist or Democratic ; and while 
both parties were attempting to adjust the govern- 
ment to sectional differences, discussions about 
slavery became prominent. This was practised both 
in the North and South; but more in the latter, for 
the negro liked not the colder climate, while he 
seemed to flourish on the Southern plantation. And 
the question took this form: ** Is slavery an evil? If 
so, should it be allowed in new States being rapidly 
admitted to the Union? " 

140 



WAR LITERATURE 

And oratory came again to the fore — not so im- 
passioned and picturesque as that belonging to the 
Revolutionary era — but more intellectual and mas- 
terful; and we must glance at the characteristics of 
these intellectual giants in order to appreciate our 
American citizenship. 

In the stormy times during the first half of the 
nineteenth century, the two parties — Whigs and 
Democrats — were merged in three. There were 
the ** Fire-Eaters/' or secessionists of the South, who 
felt that they had sacrificed much in joining the 
Union. One part of the compact that they had 
made was that their property was to be preserved, 
and that their slaves were their property. The 
leaders were John Randolph, of Roanoke, and John 
C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. 

We speak first of the brilliant, eccentric, and ex^ 
plosive John Randolph, who was sent, in 1800, to 
Congress from Virginia. Believing fully in State 
rights, he so inveighed against the growing spirit of 
consolidation that he became a perfect prophet of 
disunion. In regard to slavery, with his clear vision 
he prophesied its fall. He opposed it in theory 
while he clung to it in practice. With awkward 
manner, bitter temper, and shrill voice, he was feared 
by friend and foe — but Congress was always forced 
to listen when John Randolph spoke I 

And Randolph prepared the way for keen, logical 
John C. Calhoun, the famous South Carolinian sena- 

141 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

tor, the most distinguished advocate of State rights. 
He considered the Union but an assembly of friendly 
powers, willing to act together when expedient, but 
otherwise free to follow their own convictions; and 
he thought, too, that a State could, if it so pleased, 
nullify a law of Congress. Hence, in 1832, ap- 
peared the " Nullification Ordinance " of South Car- 
olina. 

Calhoun battled bravely for slavery; for he be- 
lieved that slaves were property and that attacks on 
property were in direct violation of the Constitution. 
His personality was splendid, and he fought Daniel 
Webster with candour, courage, and loyalty. His 
own party was absolutely with him ; and is it a won- 
der that through his influence, South Carolina, in 
i860, led the other States in secession from the 
Union? 

And over against the secessionists of the South 
were the abolitionists of the North, making up in 
zeal what they lacked in numbers. Their text was 
— that slavery was an awful crime that must be 
stamped out, even though the Union was dissolved in 
doing it. Some of them went too fast and too far, 
knowing only by report the thing that they attacked; 
but even so, theirs was the entering wedge that 
achieved a final triumph. Their most potent forces 
were William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 
Charles Sumner, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), was the 

142 



im 







WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 



HENRY CLAY 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



; '4 




fi 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 









WAR LITERATURE 

fearless leader. A Newburyport printer, he began 
life with the honest conviction that slavery threatened 
civilisation, and he was ready to arouse people to 
violence in order to exterminate it. 

As an incitement to active war, he started " The 
Liberator " as the official organ of the New England 
abolitionists, and in it he aroused grave prejudice by 
the following challenge : — 

** I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice, and I will be heard! " 

For thirty-five years he edited *' The Liberator," 
and he declaimed his principles with sonorous voice, 
though many times hounded and mobbed; but after 
his cause finally prevailed, he was counted, in the 
last years of his life, a national hero. 

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), seeing Garrison 
dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope 
tied about his waist, at once joined the cause. He 
made his bow to the public at a meeting in Faneuil 
Hall, Boston, where abolition was being attacked. 
He jumped upon the platforrn, interrupting the 
speaker, took the meeting into his own hands, turned 
the tide, and his fame was assured. 

He always delighted in captivating warlike audi- 
ences; first gaining their sympathy, and then with a 
courtesy born of gentle-breeding, and with graceful 
and finished eloquence, leading them on to conclu- 

143 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sions from which their judgment often rebelled. So 
with perfectly trained voice and rich utterances, this 
silver-tongued orator exhorted the North and antag- 
onised the South ; and in his later lecture tours, when 
the war was over, he spoke on many other subjects, 
two prominent ones being temperance and woman's 
rights. 

A short time ago, on the one hundredth anniver- 
sary of his birth, Wendell Phillips was called *' A 
Knight-errant of Humanity," '* because he met the 
burning questions of his time with dauntless courage 
and a faith that never wavered." 

And now we must set forward yet another aboli- 
tionist from Massachusetts, the scholarly senator 
Charles Sumner (1811-1894), whom the slave-hold- 
ers in Congress feared and hated. He wrote in 
twelve compact volumes the history of the anti-slavery 
movement, proclaiming most aggressively his " New 
Declaration of Independence"; and he established 
his oratorical fame by his celebrated address on 
** The True Grandeur of Nations." 

Garrison was the journalist — Whittier the poet 
— Phillips the orator — and Sumner the historian of 
the abolitionists; and there remains the novel of the 
party, which, perhaps more than any other force, 
precipitated the Civil War. This was *' Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," written by *' a little bit of a woman," 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

She belonged to a noteworthy family; and her 

144 



WAR LITERATURE 

father, Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, regarded the abo- 
lition movement as ** an instance of infatuation 
permitted by Heaven for purposes of national retribu- 
tion." As a girl, Mrs. Stowe's home was for a while 
in Cincinnati, on the borderland of slavery. She had 
seen the fugitives and heard their stories at first- 
hand, and she had, also, visited a Kentucky planta- 
tion. 

When the " Fugitive Slave Law " was passed, In 
1850, requiring citizens of free States to return 
those who escaped to them, she was filled with indig- 
nation. At this time her husband was a professor 
in Bowdoin College, and she determined — with six 
little children, the youngest not a year old, and with 
constant difficulty in obtaining household service — 
to write a novel with a grand purpose! She knew 
that to make it appealing, it must be brilliant in 
colouring; and she became the spinner of a realistic 
tale that went right to the heart of the Northerner, 
while it excited intense and bitter feeling at the 
South. 

The plot was rambling and carelessly strung to- 
gether — its syntax was faulty — and it had many 
literary crudities ; but Uncle Tom and little Eva were 
tremendously alive, and the book was full of emo- 
tional interest. It broke down New England prej- 
udice against novel-reading and theatre-going — for 
even the Puritan read it, and entered the theatre for 
the first time to see it played. 

145 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And " Uncle Tom's Cabin " had pointed its 
moral; it had larger circulation both here and abroad 
than any other American book that had been pub- 
lished; it was translated into between thirty and forty 
languages, inspiring many, even in Eastern lands, 
with an enlarged spirit of brotherhood. This re- 
mains Mrs. Stowe's master-stroke of genius, though 
she followed it with other valuable books. 

In her " Life," recently written by her son and 
grandson, this story is told : 

*' When Mr. Seward introduced Mrs. Stowe to 
President Lincoln, the latter rose, saying: ''Why, 
Mrs. Stowe, right glad to see you ! " and then with 
humourous twinkle in his eye, he added: '' So you're 
the little woman who wrote the book that made this 
great war ! " 

We have alluded to the influence of the secession 
and abolition parties, both of which were willing to 
destroy the Union, if needful to gain their ends. 
The third, or conservative party, believed that com- 
promise must be made to secure at any cost liberty 
and union, and from them this is called '' The Com- 
promise Period." The most formidable exponents 
of the party were Henry Clay, of Virginia, and 
Daniel Webster, of New Hampshire. 

Henry Clay (1777-1852), was a poor boy whose 
academic education was gained in a log-cabin, but 
he was very clever and rose rapidly, and was in 
political life in Washington until he was seventy- 

146 



WAR LITERATURE 

three, always representing his adopted State, Ken- 
tucky. 

With Calhoun, he advocated State rights, but with 
Webster, he felt that they must imperil the Union. 
He was a winning orator; his delivery was impress- 
ive; and he painted the evils of dis-umon in such 
vivid colours that the crisis was long postponed. 
The thing in which he was most active was in secur- 
ing, in 1820, the ''Missouri Compromise," accom- 
plished after long and hot debates in Congress. 
This allowed Missouri to come in as a slave State, 
but forbade slavery henceforth to be carried North 
of its Southern line. 

Senatorial and Cabinet honours came to Clay; and 
while he stoutly asserted that he " would rather be 
right than to be President," he was keenly disap- 
pointed when the latter high office did not come his 
way. 

And at Henry Clay's side, must always stand 
Daniel Webster (178 2- 1852). A poor boy, work- 
ing on a stubborn New Hampshire farm, he early 
declaimed his political views to the horses and cattle 
in the fields. With his clothes tied up in a bandanna 
handkerchief, he walked into Exeter and appeared at 
Phillips Academy, and begged an education. He 
won laurels there; and afterwards was so prominent 
at Dartmouth College, that at eighteen, he was in- 
vited to deliver the " Fourth of July " oration, and 
** Liberty and Union " then as ever was his text. 

147 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

His style was, at first, rather of the spread-eagle 
kind that was most fashionable in those days, but a 
friend laughed at him, and he struggled hard until 
he transformed it into a simple, sturdy, Saxon diction ; 
and it was not long before he could strike mighty 
blows with argumentative force. We may not fol- 
low him as a successful lawyer and statesman, 
wherein he showed marvellous insight in discussing 
either law or fact; but it Is his commanding power 
as an orator that brings him into our literary story. 

His reputation was established by an address at 
Plymouth, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the 
landing of the Pilgrims. There were two famous 
orations in connection with the Bunker Hill Monu- 
ment; noted eulogies on Adams and Jefferson; and 
realistic portrayals of many other subjects. Highest 
honours, however, came to him in his renowned 
speech, in 1830 — " The Reply to Hayne." 

At this time, Calhoun was Vice-President, and 
through his lieutenant, Robert T. Hayne, he pre- 
sented his argument for severing the Union. 

Daniel Webster employed his finest sentences to 
prove that the Nation was greater than any State, and 
for four hours he held the attention of the vast audi- 
ence — and he proved his point. His oration closed 
with the words: *' Liberty and Union, now and for- 
ever, one and inseparable ! " 

He was very fond of this triplicate form of utter- 
ance. Another illustration is: ** Let our object be 

148 



WAR LITERATURE 

our country, our whole country, and nothing but our 
country "; and yet a stronger one: *' I was born an 
American, I live an American, I die an American." 
These phrases became watchwords, or better rally- 
ing-cries, for the Whig party to take up the sword 
in defence of liberty. 

Young Emerson, for one, in his fascination " fol- 
lowed his great forehead from court-house to Senate 
chamber, from the caucus to the street ! " And 
speaking of his " great forehead " suggests his strik- 
ing appearance. People turned to gaze at him in 
the street, for as one has said, " He looked great! " 
and Whittier — who for a time gave him hero-wor- 
ship — describes him as 

" New England *s stateliest type of man, 
In port and speech Olympian; 
Whom no one met, at first, but took 
A second awed and wondering look." 

As party contests waxed more sharp, Webster still 
maintained the fight; and then there came to him an 
ambition to be President, and for this to win the 
Southern vote; and in his last striking oration de- 
livered in 1850, there was too much compromise — 
too much yielding to the " Fugitive Slave Law " — 
so odious to his adopted State, Massachusetts, that 
never could tolerate any modern views. As a result, 
Webster was denounced by the North ; and Whittier, 

H9 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in his poem, *'Ichabod!" represented his idol as 
"So fallen! so lost!" 

But may not the great statesman have been mis- 
judged? May he not have felt that yet more com- 
promise would preserve his *' Liberty and Union " 
without war? Who can tell? Webster, however, 
was disappointed and embittered by criticism and 
political defeat, and his health began to fail. His 
last words were, ** I still live " — and he does live 
to-day as our most masterful orator. 

On the exterior of Saunders's Theatre, the oratori- 
cal centre of Harvard College, are seen seven sculp- 
tured heads, representing the world's supreme ora- 
tors. They are Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Chrysos- 
tom, Bossuet, Chatham, Burke — and Daniel Web- 
ster I 

War literature was not without its many inspiring 
poems and songs, and we may give space to but a 
single utterance on both sides. Father Ryan, a 
chaplain in the Southern army, loved the South, and 
worked for his fellowmen with gentleness and sym- 
pathy. He was laureate of the Confederacy; and 
in his poem, *' The Conquered Banner," he voiced 
the feelings of a heart-broken people. We quote 
the first and last stanzas : — 

"Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary; 
Round Its staff 'tis drooping dreary; 
Furl It, fold it, — it is best: 

150 




LINCOLN EMANCIPATION STATUE AT WASHINGTON, D. C, 



WAR LITERATURE 

For there's not a man to wave it, 
And there's not a sword to save it, 
And there's not one left to lave it 
In the blood which heroes gave it, 
And its foes now scorn and brave it; 

Furl it, hide it, — let it rest! 
Furl that Banner, softly, slowly! 
Treat it gently — it is holy, 

For it droops above the dead, 
Touch it not — unfold it never; 
Let it droop there, furled forever, — 

For its people's hopes are fled." 

And Mrs. Julia Ward Howe became the laureate 
of the Union army as her magnetic *' Battle Hymn 
of the Republic " sang itself into being. The story 
of its writing is familiar: One day returning with her 
old pastor, Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, from 
witnessing a parade outside of Washington, they 
heard the soldiers singing " John Brown's Body," 
and Dr. Clarke asked her to put more suitable 
words to the music. She, at first, declined; but in 
the grey of the following morning, the inspiration 
came to her, and rising, she jotted down the stanzas 
from which we select a few lines : — 

" In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men 
free, 
While God is marching on." 

151 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And now we need just one more character to unite 
our scattered parties and to complete our chronicle 
— and this must be Abraham Lincoln, '* The Eman- 
cipator." Think of introducing a man with less 
than a year's schooling into a literary record! But 
this man had as a boy manifested indomitable will in 
freeing himself from the fetters of ignorance. He 
had read over and over a few good books, until 
from them he had gained the golden art of speaking 
and writing distinctly and to the point. 

Thus he had shaped a style of his own, unsurpassed 
in strength, sincerity, and directness. His State 
papers were models of expression, and he won 
national fame in his debates with Senator Douglas. 

A plain blunt man, he was abounding in wit and 
humour, but often carrying a sad heart, weighed down 
by the burdens of his fellows — and the greater the 
occasion, the more his heart was touched, the more 
were his soul depths revealed — and yet he hardly 
thought of literary fame; but he has bequeathed us 
two masterpieces that belong quite as much to liter- 
ature as to politics. 

One was his " Second Inaugural," delivered on 
March fourth, 1865, "With malice toward none; 
with charity for all " — it was full of faith and 
spirituality^ and seemed like a benediction — so 
soon was it followed by the tragedy that closed his 
life. Perhaps, however, the address that will make 
him longest remembered is the one delivered at 

152 



WAR LITERATURE 

Gettysburg, on November nineteenth, 1863, on the 
day when the National Cemetery was consecrated to 
the long-sought liberty. 

Edward Everett, called *' the most accomplished 
gentleman of his time," who was in turn editor, 
preacher, foreign minister, member of Congress, 
Secretary of State, Governor of Massachusetts, and 
President of Harvard College — preceded the 
speaker of the day. With graceful and dignified 
mien, he gave one of his smooth and flowing musical 
addresses which lasted for two hours, and which was 
greeted by enthusiastic applause. 

President Lincoln had been too busy to prepare a 
speech but en route from Washington he had written 
with the stub of a pencil on a bit of wrapping-paper 
— a few notes, and when Mr. Everett took his seat 
he rose awkwardly, " without grace of look or man- 
ner," and in a high, thin voice made his brief address, 
and seated himself. Perfect silence followed — he 
knew that he had failed! 

After all was over, he congratulated Mr. Everett, 
and Mr. Everett in his reply said: '* I should be glad 
if I could flatter myself that I came as near the 
central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did 
in two minutes!" And to-day President Lincoln's 
" Gettysburg Address " is called, '' The Top and 
Crown of American Eloquence." It is displayed 
on one of the walls of Oxford University to show 
the students how much can be said in less than three 

153 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

hundred words, and for the same reason it Is men- 
tioned here that our American youth may acquire 
from it the habit of concise utterance. 

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 
November nineteenth^ 1863 

" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this continent a new nation, con- 
ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that 
all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a 
great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any na- 
tion so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We 
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a 
final resting-place for those who here gave their lives 
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
and proper that we should do this. But in a larger 
sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we 
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living 
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it 
far above our power to add or detract. The world 
will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, 
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for 
us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the un- 
finished work which they who fought here have thus 
far so nobly advanced. 

It Is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us, that from these honoured 
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for 

154 



WAR LITERATURE 

which they gave the last full measure of devotion; 
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall 
have a new birth of freedom, and that government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall 
not perish from the earth." 

— Lincoln. 

FROM '' THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP " 

" Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State ! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 
We know what Master laid thy keel. 
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
And not a rent made by the gale! 
In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore. 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! " 

— Longfelhzv. 

155 



XVIII 

BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 

GEORGE BANCROFT (180O-1891) 

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT ( 1 796- 1 8 59) 

Centuries have rolled by! do they mean anything 
to the eager youth of our day, who, absorbed in mod- 
ern interests, almost forget that there is a past, for 
they have so little time to pore over its story, arid 
to gaze upon their ancestors from many lands. 
They may call history dull. Well there are, as 
Carlyle says, two kinds — one " dry as dust," the 
other *' alive " — and any youth will find it an in- 
valuable stimulus to read himself into a love for 
*' alive " history; for *' alive " history is like a pan- 
orama, unrolling in miniature scenes of adventure 
and exploration and war and camp and court and 
senate. 

Do we realise the gratitude which we owe the his- 
torian? Think of what he must possess and what 
he must do. He should first have plenty of leisure 
to spend in investigation and plenty of money to 
conduct this investigation by travel — sometimes 
covering hundreds of miles to verify a single fact. 
Added to these, are the study of languages, and the 

156 



BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 

purchase of costly maps and pictures and manuscripts. 
Extreme patience and perseverance are required in 
unearthing dusty records, and finally all are to be col- 
lected and arranged in correct perspective. 

And the historian must steer most carefully be- 
tween Scylla and Charybdis; knowing that if his 
work is too poetic or imaginative, it will not be 
counted accurate — while if it is unadorned, it will 
not be read. All honour to the successful one I 

We recall many faithful historians — those who 
have well exploited our past: the colonial took part 
in the scenes which he describes, while others 
looked back at them over the centuries; and there 
are many to-day in the ranks working earnestly. As 
our study is not with living authors, we select four of 
those who wrote in the nineteenth century, and from 
each we shall try to obtain a memory picture that 
may prove a sesame to unlock an interest in their 
spirited work. These are Bancroft and Prescott, 
Motley and Parkman. 

George Bancroft (1800-1891), the son of a Con- 
gregational minister at Worcester, Massachusetts, 
came into the world with the century. An alert, 
shrewd boy, he graduated at Harvard at sixteen, 
taking such high rank that at the request of the 
college, he was sent to Germany to study. Here 
again he proved an eager student in both history and 
philosophy, and he specially equipped himself as a 
linguist. 

157 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He enjoyed rather unusual experiences for a 
young American of his time, for he was received with 
honour by such distinguished Germans as Goethe, 
Von Humboldt, Bunsen, and Niebuhr. Besides, he 
met Byron and other English literary men. 

After five years he returned home. Shortly he 
published a small book of poems; and in the same 
year, with a friend he established the Round Hill 
School for boys, at Northampton, Massachusetts. 
For some time, this was most successful, for boys of 
prominent families came from all over the land; and 
in this building may be seen the little study in which 
Bancroft commenced his stupendous work, " The 
History of the United States.'' After a decade, the 
school lost its popularity and the boys stampeded. 

Bancroft, nevertheless, was not discouraged. He 
presently was appointed collector of the port of Bos- 
ton, and later Secretary of the Navy; and while he 
could not pilot a boat, he determined that others 
should be proficient in sea-tactics, and urged the 
founding of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. In 
time, he was sent on diplomatic missions to both Eng- 
land and Germany. But wherever he lived or what- 
ever he did, other duties were never permitted to in- 
terfere with his wide and painstaking research into 
historical studies. 

His principal work was *' The History of the 
United States from the Discovery of the Continent 
to the Establishment of the Constitution in 1789." 

158 



BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 

This was in several volumes, to which were after- 
wards added two more, *' The History of the For- 
mation of the Constitution." The first volume was 
published in 1850 — the last in 1874 — and they 
were extensively read as they came out. Through 
all, the writer adhered to a rigid rule to secure per- 
fect accuracy. The work is clear, concise, and ex- 
cellent — and Indispensable in a well-equipped ref- 
erence library. 

Bancroft believed so fully in the dignity of history 
that his actors are often statuesque rather than soul- 
ful. He perhaps digressed too much; and he was 
such an intense upholder of everything American 
that he is sometimes more patriotic than critical. 

But Bancroft's narrative is masterful, and more 
than as teacher, poet, essayist, traveller, philologist, 
or diplomat — will he be held in remembrance as 
the historian of our United States. Perchance be- 
cause he toiled so zealously and to such a good old 
age, he is sometimes designated '' A prose Homer," 
or again '* A modern Herodotus." 

He was twice married, and lived for years in 
Twenty-first Street, New York; but he is more asso. 
ciated with his Washington house, near the Congres- 
sional Library. He was so fond of politics that 
naturally life at the Capital was absorbing, and as 
he lived ninety-one years, he came into touch with 
successive generations of statesmen. 

Here it was that his library grew Into vast pro- 

159 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

portions — from floor to ceiling, on the window- 
seats, overflowing into other rooms — for he liter- 
ally burrowed in books, sparing neither time nor 
money in the selection of his twelve thousand vol- 
umes, and in procuring authentic copies of State 
documents. 

His summer residence was at Newport, Rhode 
Island. Here he set his rose-garden to bloom with 
as much energy as he bestowed upon his library in 
winter — for books and flowers were his loves. 

There are two kinds of history: One may be com- 
pared to a map with its exact dimensions, distances, 
and angles. Such a history is Bancroft's — reliable, 
definite, and exact ; the other is found in the histories 
of William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), in 
which we forget the boundaries, for he painted his 
scenes in such gorgeous colouring that Daniel Web- 
ster exclaimed, after reading his first work: " A new 
meteor has suddenly blazed forth in full splendour.'' 

And as we turn to Prescott's shaded life, we 
realise in what striking contrast it stands to his writ- 
ings. His brave, literary ancestry is shown in two 
crossed swords that hang on the walls of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society: one belonged to his 
grandfather. Gen. Prescott, who fought on the 
American side at Bunker Hill — the other to his 
maternal grandfather, a British officer in an earlier 
war. 

The homestead was at Pepperell, Massachusetts, 

160 



5- - ~ ss!«>~^^-Sf 



R<SS , ■--. i-«SS^ s\- -^.x!„-"--^'<:r-^: "-' V 





i 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY ^ „^ 



■0 










GEORGE BANCROFT 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 



BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 

but Prescott's birthplace was Salem, where his father 
was a prominent lawyer. He liked to read and to 
tell a story; but he was not fond of applying himself, 
and after he had successfully passed his examinations 
at Harvard, he wrote home that he felt twenty 
pounds lighter, A graceful, interesting youth, with 
wealth and sparkling social qualities, he seemed to 
have everything to make life attractive when sud- 
denly his whole future was changed by a simple crust 
of bread. This crust thrown across the table in a 
students' frolic at Harvard hit Prescott in the eye 
and entirely destroyed its vision. 

He struggled manfully with the situation, and at- 
tempted to go on with his studies, and then was sent 
to the Azores and to Europe for his health; but 
brave living in a darkened room, and the advice of 
the best physicians were of no avail — the other eye 
sympathised more and more until its light almost 
went out — and Prescott faced the question what 
should he do with his future. 

He might spend it in leisure, always tagged with 
** I am blind," and thus gain the sympathy of the 
world; but with unflinching purpose he decided that 
loss of eyesight should not ruin his career. He 
could not be a lawyer as he had planned, but he 
might become a scholar and write books, and like 
Milton, he '' cared not how late he came into life, 
only that he came lit.'* 

An indifferent pupil as a boy, he now studied 

i6i 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITER4TURE 

grammar and rhetoric and French and German and 
Spanish and Latin classics, and he found in London 
a noctograph, or blind-man's writing-machine, which 
helped him greatly. His plan for a working-day 
was seven hours, in which he might use his eyes five 
minutes at a time for perhaps thirty-five minutes ; for 
the rest, his secretary read to him so that, as he said, 
his ears should assist his eyes. 

He learned to concentrate his mind upon a single 
theme and to assimilate facts to an extraordinary 
degree, so that he finally could dictate as many as 
fifty or sixty pages a day, and sometimes he would 
for days carry many pages in his mind. Often he 
would be weary, but he prodded himself on, until 
he had spent ten years in preparation for a literary 
life. 

Spain — always alluring to our romancers — at- 
tracted him as it did Irving, for his internal vision 
gloried in the rich colouring, and yet he specially dis- 
liked searching into old records; but readers read to 
him, and copyists copied for him in large script so 
that he might make his own corrections; and while 
walking and driving, he mentally arranged his scenes 
and fought his battles. 

In 1837, his *' History of Ferdinand and Isabella " 
was published, and at once was most successful both 
here and abroad, and coming out just before Christ- 
mas, it became the fashionable holiday gift En- 
couraged by its reception, he sent fifteen hundred 

162 



BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 

dollars to Madrid, for manuscript copies of Spanish 
State papers, and in 1843, ^^^ *' Conquest of Mex- 
ico " appeared. This was the subject on which Irv- 
ing had intended to write but which he gracefully 
surrendered to Prescott; and Prescott revelled in the 
early and magnificent civilisation of Mexico, and 
somehow he made this history of Cortez's achieve- 
ment read just like a tale of chivalry. 

This was followed, in 1847, by '' The Conquest of 
Peru," in which we have the daring exploits of a 
handful of adventurers under Pizarro, their intrepid 
leader, capturing the land of the Incas, and again 
enriching Spain with gold and jewels. How Pres- 
cott loved the gorgeous pageantry! for truly *' the 
glint of armour is in it, the crimson and gold and 
floating banners and the movement of advancing 
hosts." His last book, *' The History of Philip II," 
he did not live to complete. 

It was in his home in Beacon Street, Boston, in his 
darkened library, reached by a concealed stairway, 
that he toiled assiduously, year after year, with his 
noctograph, reader, and copyist. His patient, per- 
severing effort was rewarded by admiring friends on 
both sides of the ocean. Oxford gave him a de- 
gree; Macaulay, and Thackeray and Gladstone 
greatly honoured him ; and his books were translated 
into five foreign languages — and yet Prescott was 
sensible of his limitations. Once he said: " I have 
as good bairns as fall to lot of most men; a wife 

163 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

whom a quarter of century of love has made my 
better half — but the sweet fountain of intellectual 
vision of which I drunk in boyhood is sealed to mc 
for ever." 

And yet he said again : *' There is no happiness 
so great as that of a permanent and lovely interest 
in some intellectual labour." Truly he must have 
realised Jean Ingelow's words: " Work is Heaven's 
Hest" 

The noblest monument of Prescott is his sunshiny 
disposition, Bancroft said of him : — 

" He was greater than his writings/* 



164 



XIX 

MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (1814-1877)' 

FRANCIS PARKMAN (1823-1893) 

John Lothrop Motley was born in Dorchester, 
Massachusetts, and died near Dorchester, England. 
His genial biographer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
gives a happy picture of his childhood days in the 
Walnut Street home, in Boston. 

Here the great attic and garden were given over 
to the sports of this *' Embryo Dramatist " of a 
nation's life, and his two playfellows, Wendell 
Phillips, " The Silver-tongued Orator " to be, and 
Gold Appleton, the future wit and essayist, of whom 
Holmes has well said that *' he has spilled more good 
things on the wasteful air in conversation than would 
carry a diner-out through half a dozen London sea- 
sons." 

With cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, these 
youthful knights or bandits enacted all kinds of im- 
promptu dramas. One day, for example, the 
younger brother was found upon the floor wrapped 
in a shawl, and kept quiet by sweetmeats, while figur- 
ing as the " Dead Caesar," while over the prostrate 

165 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

figure one of the literary trio was declaring Mark 
Antony's oration! 

Young Motley was always reading or studying, 
and at the age of eleven, he surprised his family 
with two chapters of a novel — but it was never com- 
pleted. When he went to boarding-school, he wrote 
home for books and newspapers — '' Nothing to eat, 
nothing to drink, but books! ^^ For a time he 
studied under Bancroft, at the Round Hill School, 
and at seventeen, graduated from Harvard — an 
impulsive youth, of striking personal beauty, but too 
haughty to be popular. He was already a fine con- 
versationalist and devoted to society. 

Then he went abroad and at Gottingen and Berlin, 
he established with his fellow-student, Bismarck, a 
life-long intimacy. The beauty of his eyes and the 
ease with which he acquired Xjlerman were what 
first attracted the great diplomat. On his re- 
turn, he married the sister of Park Benjamin — 
editor, poet, and lecturer — read law, wrote two 
unsuccessful novels, and could not decide what 
next. 

Finally, some historical sketches delighting his 
friends, they urged him to continue them, and at last 
he concluded to become a historian. He looked 
about for a field not already pre-empted, and the 
story of plucky Holland appealed to him, and how 
this small determined nation had won her freedom, 
against tremendous odds, from aggressive Spain. 

i66 



MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 

He made three divisions of this text: First, ** The 
Rise of the Dutch Republic"; Second, ''The His- 
tory of the United Netherlands"; Third, ''The 
History of the Thirty Years' War." He did not 
live to finish the third, but was working on " John of 
Barneveld, Advocate," when he died. 

The Netherlands, at that time, formed a subject 
comparatively sealed to the outside world, and Mot- 
ley went abroad to study, and followed his quest 
from country to country; and owing to the courtesy 
of the Queen of Holland, and the liberality of many 
governments^ archives buried for centuries were 
freely thrown open, and he spent years in just poring 
over them. 

He found a key to State secrets, and read " the 
bribings and the windings " of old despots, who had 
previously appeared only on State occasions; and he 
said one day: "I remain among my fellow-worms, 
feeding on their musty mulberry leaves, out of which 
we are afterward to spin our silk." The deeper he 
went, the more fascinated he grew, until he called 
himself a perfect stranger in the modern world — 
and felt that if he might only appear in the sixteenth 
century, he would find himself on terms of intimacy 
with the leading men of that age; and it was not until 
he was fully in touch with his subject that he began 
to write. 

And how quaintly he describes that sturdy little 
land — 

167 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" That rides at anchor and is moored, 
In which they do not live but go aboard '* ; 

and in what eloquent language he paints her desper- 
ate struggle for civil and religious liberty. There 
are vignettes of bigoted Philip Second, inconstant 
Queen Elizabeth, and William '* the Liberator," 
whose motto even in those tumultuous days was: 
*' Alvi^ays tranquil amid the vs^aves " — and who, 
though a most genial man, became William, *' the 
Silent," because with rare sagacity, he knew when 
not to speak ! 

The volumes are full of dramatic scenes in this age 
when intrigue and assassination were shadowed 
everywhere. There is the tale of Margaret of 
Parma and the Beggars ; the depicting of stern, cruel 
battles; the defence of beautiful Leyden with its 
orchards and gardens and pigeons, and its he- 
roic rescue by " The Beggars of the Sea." Motley 
does not close his narrative, till Holland has 
achieved absolute independence. Truly, he swept 
*' The black past like Van Tromp with his 
broom " ! 

Freedom and art grew together In Holland, and 
in visiting this picturesque land we see how the 
Dutch painters of its *' Golden Age " have perpetu- 
ated her victory on the walls of her galleries ; and in 
reading Motley's word-pictures painted, too, with 
minute detail, we find that he, also, has perpetuated 

i68 



MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 

the story of liberty and made the Dutch museum as 
interesting as the galleries. 

Motley was himself such a lover of freedom that 
perhaps his principal fault as a historian was, that he 
could not write dispassionately; but his books read 
just like fiction and they were accorded everywhere 
the warmest reception. He belonged to the " Satur- 
day Club," with Emerson and Hawthorne and 
Lowell and Whipple and Whittier and Agassiz and 
Irving and Prescott and Bancroft and Holmes; and 
in 1857, when he was leaving for England, the mem- 
bers came together to bid him farewell, and the last 
lines of the '* Parting Health " written by Holmes 
were : — 

" The true Knight of Learning, the world holds him dear, 
Love bless him, joy crown him, God speed his career ! " 

Motley several times received the honour awarded 
to many of our literary men of being appointed min- 
ister to foreign courts. He was at St Petersburg 
and London, and during the whole of the Civil War, 
in Vienna. He had the courtly manners and con- 
versational gifts that would be his passport anywhere, 
but for some reason, he was not always successful as 
a diplomat. He may have been indiscreet, and cer- 
tainly political intrigues were formed against him. 

He was disappointed, but always consoled by his 
social and scholarly triumphs, the marked courtesies 

169 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

shown him at great functions, and the admiration 
expressed by Froude and Macaulay and other men 
of letters, for his works. He lived much abroad, 
specially during the later years of his life, and he 
died in England, and with his wife is buried in Kensal 
Green Cemetery. Bryant, who highly regarded 
him, wrote a sonnet from which we quote this 
line : — 

" Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days! " 

What different subjects attract different historians! 
One devotes his life to the enthusiastic study of his 
own land; another glories in mighty Spain; while a 
third applauds heroic Holland, in wresting herself 
from the grasp and aggressions of this same mighty 
Spain ; and Francis Parkman looks off upon a country 
of forests and Indians and adventure, of French and 
English encounter, and resolves to centre his labours 
upon such themes. He was drawn to them even as a 
bOy; for although his home was in Boston, as he was 
not strong he was sent when very young to sojourn at 
his grandfather's home at Medway, then on the edge 
of a vast forest. Here he learned but little from 
books; for walking to school through the woods, he 
spent most of his time in making the acquaintance of 
birds and squirrels and reptiles and insects, and in 
conjuring all kinds of savage escapades. Even as 
a sophomore in college, his purpose was fixed to be 
a historian, and he selected the subject on which he 

170 



MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 

would ever afterwards write, and he never wavered. 

His general topic was " France and England in 
North America," and it ranged from the period of 
early French settlement in the New World and the 
alliance with the Indians, to the victories of the Eng- 
lish over these French and Indian allies. There are 
eight volumes. As a preparation. Motley spent his 
college vacations in tramps in Adirondack and 
Canadian forests; he was sent to Europe for his 
health, and in Rome lodged in a monastery, to dis- 
cover the character of the Jesuit priests and their 
mission. He searched thoroughly everywhere, as we 
have seen, for whatever might be introduced in his 
writings. 

Then, In 1846, with a friend he travelled West 
over the Rocky Mountains to study the Indian at 
first-hand. He met many tribes and visited nearly 
every spot which he later described. Always armed 
and on the watch, he camped for months with the 
Sioux, joining their feast or war-hunt or ceremonial, 
or defiling with the wild cavalcade through the 
gorges. Thus he gained insight into the character 
of the olden day savage, with his bow and arrow and 
paint and embroidery and war-plumes and fluttering 
trophies. No wonder that to Parkman is given the 
palm of a masterly treatment of the *' Red Man." 

But exposure weakened a constitution that was 
never strong; wigwam, smoke, and sunlight so in-^ 
jured his eyes that he was threatened with total 

171 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

blindness; and when he left the Western land, his 
health was impaired for life. For long, he was not 
allowed to work at all, and finally only permitted to 
use his eyes every other minute, for two or three 
hours daily. In 1849, by means of dictation, he was 
able to publish his '* Oregon Trail " — the history 
of his own trip — and a thrilling resume of out-door 
experiences. 

And Parkman rose above every obstacle. He 
visited the European libraries several times to collect 
copies of valuable manuscripts. He learned to em- 
ploy a " literary gridiron," a frame of parallel wires, 
laid on the paper to guide his hand. Like Prescott, 
he worked slowly and laboriously; but like Prescott, 
his pages grew to chapters, and his chapters grew 
in time to eight completed volumes — a library of 
captivating diversion to the youth of to-day. 

Parkman is not stately like Prescott, nor eloquent 
like Motley; but his work is graphic and philosophi- 
cal, and while illumined with the romance of early 
adventure, it is inspired with the spirit of modern 
action. 

Parkman toiled diligently until he was seventy 
years old — almost his whole life. His admirers 
call him *' the youngest of our quartette — our finest 
historian." Who may decide? 

John Fiske, in one of his eloquent lectures, once 
alluded to " Pontiac and His Companions " as " one 
of the most brilliant and fascinating books that had 

172 



MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 

been written by any historian since the days of Herod- 
otus." The words were hardly out of his mouth 
when he caught sight of Parkman in the audience, 
and he said : — 

*' I never shall forget the sudden start he gave, the 
heightened colour on his noble face, and its curious look of 
surprise and pleasure, an expression as honest and simple 
as one might see in a school-boy suddenly singled out for 
praise." 

In his quiet home, in Chestnut Street, Boston, 
Parkman lived much in his library, surrounded by 
books, Indian relics, Barye statuettes, and pictures of 
his favourite cats. His children, after the death of 
their mother, had gone to live with their aunt, and 
he enjoyed their frequent visits, and later those of 
his wonderful grandchildren. Always suffering, 
he showed astonishing self-mastery; he so liked to 
have his sister read a good story aloud, and often 
used family jokes and nonsense to conceal his real 
pain. 

His summer home, at Jamaica Plains, was an 
ideally beautiful one. He was as fond of roses as 
Bancroft. He cultivated flowers and wrote a book 
about them, maintaining that gardening had saved 
his life. He was devoted to rowing, and here on 
the border of the lake where he used to moor his 
boat, a memorial has been raised in his honour, 
adorned with the ** Spirit of the Woods " — and Dr. 

173 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Holmes added another memorial in the following 
stanzas : — 

" He told the red man's story ; far and wide 

He searched the unwritten records of his race; 
He sat a listener at the Sachem's side, 

He tracked the hunter through his wild-wood chase. 

"High o'er his head the soaring eagle screamed; 

The wolf's long howl rang nightly through the vale; 
Tramped the lone bear; the panther's eye-balls gleamed; 
The bison's gallop thundered on the gale. 

" Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife — 

Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize — 
Which swarming host should mould a nation's life. 
Which royal banner flaunt the Western skies. 

" Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod 
Native and alien joined their hosts in vain — 
The lilies withered where the lion trod, 

Till peace lay panting on the ravaged plain." 



174 



XX 

NEW INFLUENCES IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND 

Puritanism that had made New England famous 
as a literary centre held sway there until about a 
hundred years ago; but its views were such that it 
did little towards bringing about a broader culture, 
even though Franklin was doing much for Philadel- 
phia, and New York was enjoying her *' Knicker- 
bocker Group." But in the nineteenth century, 
there came to New England a marked spiritual and 
intellectual awakening — a ** Golden Age " of liter- 
ature which centred in Concord and Boston. This 
was the result of many influences. 

As the United States claimed independence, new 
social and political views were agitated. There 
was the abolitionist movement; newspapers multi- 
plied; the Kantean philosophy was imported frorm 
Germany, and books on free thought from England. 
Then William EUery Channing, a devout and elo- 
quent preacher in Boston, led the Unitarian move- 
ment, in a belief that insisted on more liberal reli- 
gious thought. 

By the Puritan, literature and a love for beauty 
had been frowned upon, because they had drawn the 
attention from matters of greater religious moment 

175 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

— and now these very things were considered help- 
ful to religious life; for as Emerson says in his 
" Rhodora " : — 

". . . . if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being," 

and culture of all kinds became fashionable. 

And now, too, Transcendentalism comes to the 
front — a vague theory that in its day had such 
powerful followers that we may not pass it by, 
though what it ever accomplished remains a problem ! 

And first the word *' transcendental "; its direct 
meaning is '' a speculating on matters which tran- 
scend the range of human intellect, even until these 
become the motives that govern our lives.'* It is 
a gospel alike of free-thinking and individualism — 
all to be strengthened by communion with Nature. 
It included enthusiastic study of many ''isms": 
among them, idealism, liberalism, individualism, 
Unitarianism • — and as to patriotism, it made the 
strongest kind of protest against slavery. Lowell 
said that in it, " Everybody had a chance to attend 
to everybody else's business." 

Communities were established where everything 
was common — but common sense/ Some would 
not eat meat and preached a " potato gospel " ; others 
gave up flour; while yet others were confident that 
there would be an instant millennium as soon as hooks 

176 




CO 
CO 



Q 

P< 
O 
O 

:z: 
o 
o 

»\ 

>H 

o 

CO 

O 

o 

o 
o 

u 

CO 



INFLUENCES IN NEW ENGLAND 

and eyes should be substituted for buttons! There 
were discussions and conversations, led by Calvinists, 
Unitarians, abolitionists, and cranks! '* The Dial'' 
was the organ of the club, and its first editor was the 
eccentric prophetess, Margaret FuUen 

She was a clever woman who had studied Latin 
at six, read Shakespeare at eight, and at twenty-two 
had covered the range of modern literature. A 
brilliant conversationalist, her words were said to 
Irradiate any subject. Emerson called her: ** The 
pivotal mind in modern literature." 

She had firm faith in demonology, always imagin- 
ing that she was being moved by some mysterious, 
fateful power. Although an ardent student of 
Goethe, she heartily interested herself for a time in 
the Transcendental movement. For two years, she 
struggled to make " The Dial '' a success, and then 
renounced to Emerson its editorship. 

Under Horace Greeley, she next went to New 
York as a critic on " The Tribune." Then she 
journeyed, abroad and met Carlyle in England. 
Her next prominent move was made In Italy, where, 
like Mrs. Browning, she threw herself with burning 
zeal into the struggle for " Italy free 1 " Here she 
secretly married D'Ossoli, a friend of Mazzini's. 
In 1850, she was returning to America with her hus- 
band and child, bringing a manuscript which she 
had written on the Italian Revolution, and the family 
was shipwrecked ofi Fire Island. 

177 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The leading apostle of Transcendentalism was 
Amos Bronson Alcott of Concord — a man so satu- 
rated with theories that he never could descend to 
assist his household in their heroic efforts for daily 
bread. Upon a side hill near his home a chapel was 
built where his ** School of Philosophy " was estab- 
lished. Louisa Alcott wrote: — 

" The town swarms with budding philosophers and they 
roost on our steps like hens waiting for corn." 

But in the chapel gathered philosophers from all 
the world over to take part in weighty arguments, 
and to listen to Dr. Alcott's sublime " Conversa- 
tions." The school continued from 1878 until 1888 

— its closing service being a memorial to Dr. Alcott 
who had died a short time before. Others inter- 
ested were Dr. Channing, Dr. Parker, Dr. Ripley, 
James Freeman Clarke, Emerson, and Elizabeth Pea- 
body. Some were visionary — some were practical 

— but all were united in enthusiasm for '* plain living 
and high thinking." 

Another expression of modern thought was mani- 
fested in the *' Brook Farm Social Settlement," at 
West Roxbury. This was founded by about twenty 
eager intellects under the leadership of Dr. Ripley, a 
Unitarian clergyman, who later was an editor. The 
number of members increased to nearly two hundred. 
Among the chosen spirits were Hawthorne, and the 

178 



INFLUENCES IN NEW ENGLAND 

graceful essayist and magazine-writer, George Wil- 
liam Curtis. The text of the community was: " To 
live on the faculties of the soul." There were to 
be at the same time plenty of work and plenty of 
leisure. But many of the members knew nothing 
about agriculture, and after ten hours of daily labour, 
they were not alert to '' soul thought." 

After several years, the principal building which 
had cost ten thousand dollars was burned, and Brook 
Farm went to pieces for financial reasons. How- 
ever, out of all the influences that were at work, a 
vital note was struck for intellectual and spiritual 
freedom, and it became insistent in the lives of the 
authors about whom we are now to speak. 



179 



XXI 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was the most famous of 
the Transcendentalists, and in his day, America's 
greatest philosopher; and he came naturally by his 
learning, for he had an ancestry of seven or eight 
generations of preachers. The father, a scholarly 
man, was settled over a Boston parish when Ralph 
was born, and although the child was sent almost at 
once to a dame's school, his father deplored that, at 
three, he could not read very well! The little fel- 
low was extremely gentle, and we may imagine that 
he was inculcated with high moral standards. 

N. P. Willis, the poet, however, who used to see 
him playing on the street has the audacity to call him : 
*' One of those pale little moral-sublimes, with 
turned-over shirt-collar, who were recognised by 
Boston school-boys as having fathers that are Uni- 
tarians ! '' 

Ralph was but eight when his father died, and 
he always remembered with pride the stately funeral, 
at which the *' Ancient and Honourable Artillery '' 
escorted the body of their late chaplain to the grave ; 
and the child had other memories, too, and these 
were of poverty and self-denial — of sharing his 

180 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

brother's overcoat so that In winter he could go to 
school only on alternate days; or how sometimes 
when the children were hungry, the mother enter- 
tained them with traditions of their heroic ancestors. 

She was a woman of highest ideals, this mother; 
the church honoured her and helped her a little, but 
even so the way was difficult. And there was, also, 
Spartan-like Aunt Mary, who always held with the 
mother that the boys were born to be educated; and 
she urged them on with such inspiring phrases as 
these: "Scorn trifles" — "Always do what you are 
afraid to do ! " 

When Ralph was eleven, Dr. Ezra Ripley, pastor 
over the church at Concord, took his step-son's 
widow and children to live with him there in the 
storied " Old Manse." It was in this home that 
Ralph's grandfather, the militant preacher, had 
lived; and It was Ralph who wrote later the poem 
read at the anniversary of the fight. This poem is 
really almost as famous as the fight; for it contains 
the following immortal lines which are emblazoned 
on the " Minute-man " : — 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world ! " 

The Emerson family remained but a few years 
in Concord, and on their return to Boston, Mrs, 

• 181 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Emerson took boarders, and Dn Ripley sent her a 
cow which Ralph drove to pasture through what is 
now a fashionable part of the city; and finally the 
boys did enter college, through the Boston Latin 
School, and Ralph did many things to pay his ex- 
penses. He carried the President's official messages; 
waited on table at commons; declaimed on occasion; 
wrote themes for other fellows; and tutored in vaca- 
tion. Once he actually sent his mother five dollars 
to buy a shawl, but it went to pay the butcher's bill. 

He graduated at eighteen, and with what courage 
he would have walked forth could he have foreseen 
that to-day " Emerson Hall," in Harvard, attests to 
the honour in which his life-work is held. Until his 
graduation, he had always been " Ralph"; now he 
announced that he would prefer to be called 
'* Waldo." He aided his brother in one young 
ladies' school in Boston, and then was usher in an- 
other. Some of the girls were older than he, and 
they did like to make him blush; but they dared not 
take any real liberties with his youth, for he had 
such a scholarly mien and carried himself with such 
dignity. 

Later his brother went to Gottingen, and Waldo 
entered the Divinity School, at Cambridge. He 
quite naturally slipped into the ancestral profession 
in those days when over forty per cent, of the Har- 
vard graduates studied for the ministry. The 
classical scholar, Edward Everett, was not only his 

182 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

master in Greek, but had much to do in shaping his 
life thought. In due time, Emerson was " appro- 
bated " to preach, and he was at first the assistant 
and then pastor of a leading Unitarian church in 
Boston. He also, In 1829, married a wife, a Miss 
Tucker, who proved one of his truest inspirations. 
She, however, died soon afterwards, leaving her hus- 
band an annuity of twelve hundred dollars. 

It was during these years that Emerson's views on 
individuality began to assert themselves — views in- 
fluenced by the free thought that had been imported 
in German and English books. He adopted the 
motto: '' Be bold, be free, be true, be right, else you 
will be enslaved cowards." The rites of his church 
hampered him, for more and more he believed in 
spirit not in form. *' Religion is obsolete," he 
claimed, ** when lives do not proceed from it" 
Finally he resigned both pastorate and ministry, and 
his health giving way, he sailed, in 1832, on a brig 
for Europe, then a month distant from our land. 

It was to be a scholarly pilgrimage; he was de- 
sirous to meet in the flesh Wordsworth whose Nature 
teachings had interested him, and Carlyle, '* the gun 
of guns " for depth, and he had the pleasure of see- 
ing not only these but many other authors. He 
found Carlyle buried among his Scottish moors, and 
their chance for acquaintance was a white day in both 
lives. Carlyle called Emerson " one of the most 
lovable creatures" he ** had ever looked upon"; 

183 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and Emerson was one of the first to hail Carlyle, and 
he made his works known here almost before they 
were abroad. 

On Emerson's return, he determined to devote 
his whole future to literature, and he made his home 
in Concord, which is situated in a level country like 
Warwickshire; it has a winding river like the Avon, 
and besides it was near the stage route to Boston. 
Emerson said of it that it had " no seaport, no cotton, 
no shoe trade, no water-power, neither gold, lead, 
coal, oil, or marble/' But he would do with it what 
Agassiz was doing with the Harvard Museum, make 
it a shrine that all Europeans must visit. And " The 
Sage of Concord " succeeded in converting the town 
into a literary Mecca; for was it not the cherished 
home of Hawthorne and Thoreau and the Alcotts 
and Channing and Sanborn, and others associated 
with our literature? 

In 1836, Emerson was married again — this time 
to Lydia Jackson of Plymouth; and the wedding- 
journey was the chaise-ride from Plymouth up to 
Concord. He purchased a farm, but did not realise 
until later what a bargain he had made in blue-birds, 
bobolinks and thrushes — in sunrises and sunsets. 
The large square house was '' stocked with books and 
papers and as many friends as possible." Its host's 
welcoming motto was: *' Any one that knocks at my 
door shall have my attention.'' An old-fashioned 
flower-garden shortly displayed itself, for Emerson 

184 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

found, after he married, that though he planted corn 
ever so often, it was sure to come up tulips." 

A man of simple, sturdy habits, he believed in 
manual labour. '' My own right hand my cup- 
bearer shall be," he asserted, and he could do almost 
anything except handle tools; with these he was so 
awkward that little Waldo, one day as he watched 
him digging, exclaimed: "Papa, I am afraid you 
will dig your leg! " 

And Emerson walked very pleasantly with the 
towns-people, interesting many in his views about 
** plain living and high thinking." He was de- 
lighted with his pupil Thoreau, who was for two 
years an inmate in his home, and who was so ingen- 
ious that he made himself most useful in both house 
and garden. Then there was the dreamy, profound 
Dr. Alcott, who lived over the way, and Hawthorne 
whom he often encountered in the woodsy path. 
And a special attraction was added in the clear-eyed 
girls and manly boys of the town, and he called the 
latter " masters of the play-ground and the street." 

He tried to help them as he walked among them, 
with sentiments of right thinking, brave speech, and 
cheerful work. He was uneasy at the number of 
books that were appearing to divert them from the 
standard authors that he had loved. He begged 
them to be moderate in all things; to beware of the 
words *' intense " and ''exquisite"; and in writing 
to avoid italics. 

185 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" Lecture Lyceums '* were now being organised 
In different parts of New England, and Emerson 
not only wrote but made the platform his *' free 
pulpit," and young people greatly liked to hear him 
lecture. The youthful Higginson and Lowell, for 
example, very often could not understand what he 
was talking about — but they went again and again 
— " not to hear what Emerson said but to hear 
Emerson." ''Were we enthusiasts?" Lowell says. 
*' I hope and believe we were, and am thankful to 
the man who made us worth something for once in 
our lives." 

The corner-stone to Emerson's fame was the 
oration, " The American Scholar," which he de- 
livered in 1837, before the '' Phi Beta Kappa So- 
ciety," at Harvard. He had been deemed a preacher 
of mysticism, and was glad of this opportunity to ex- 
press his practical ideas. In the oration, he urged 
the young men of Puritan New England to individu- 
alism, self-reliance, sincerity, and courage, and above 
all to cultivate soul freedom: *' We will walk on 
our own feet ; we will work with our own hands ; we 
will speak our own minds." Daring words these! 
and an eager crowd listened breathlessly to this new 
voice. 

Holmes styled the oration " our intellectual Dec- 
laration of Independence," and said that the young 
men went out from it as if a prophet had been de- 
claiming: "Thus saith the Lord." Carlyle, after 

186 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882). 

reading it, wrote to Emerson: '* You are a new era, 
my man, in your huge country," And from this 
time until nearly the end of his life, Emerson deliv- 
ered lectures all over the United States and Europe ; 
but never a one was so logical as this that took Cam- 
bridge by storm and caused great unrest. 

Another stepping-stone to Emerson's fame was his 
" Essay on Nature," which was a text for his future 
philosophy. It was written in the " Old Manse," 
at Concord, not long before he established his home 
there, and was published in book form, in 1839. It 
is full of descriptive passages and his aim in this is 
to set forth his idealistic philosophy, proving that the 
beauty of the universe belongs to every individual 
who will lay claim to it, and that through communion 
with Nature, we may feel in us the presence of the 
God of Nature, and free ourselves from the tyranny 
of materialisation. 

Though Emerson had not the heart-love of a 
Burns or a Bryant, he was really very fond of Nature. 
He studied in the dreamy woods, where he heard 
wandering voices in the air and whispers in the 
breeze. Another delight was to get into the little 
boat moored in the river just back of his house, and 
with one stroke of the paddle pass from the world 
into the serene realm of sunset and moonlight. 

Emerson jotted down everything in his journal 
which he always carried, naming it his " savings- 
bank." Apart from a memorial to Margaret Fuller, 

187 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

his writings were mostly essays, and these were 
largely from the striking passages in his lectures, and 
sometimes he would spend years in stringing together 
selections from one of them. His constant habit, 
in composing either prose or poetry, was to think out 
each sentence or line without regard to .what was to 
follow — so his writings are rather collections of 
proverbs than smooth, harmonious pages. But 
what other man has created such living epigrams iot 
a nation ! 

Plato was always his master; and like his master, 
he strove to think deep and high. Sometimes he 
would wander so far away that he found it difficult 
to explain his own philosophy. At least once when 
he was asked to make clear a somewhat obscure pas- 
sage, he was forced — like Robert Browning under 
the same circumstances — to confess that he did not 
know what he meant, saying: '' I suppose that I felt 
that way when I wrote it." 

His essays appeared in series, 1841-1878- — and 
readers do not agree as to which are best; but among 
the most helpful are *' Compensation," " Friend- 
ship," " Self-reliance," " Books," '' Society and Soli- 
tude," and '' Considerations by the Way." His 
prose in his day overshadowed his poetry, and we 
do not know now which will abide the longer. The 
poetry, also, was full of high theories and Nature 
was prominent. There are many good lines and 
some holding ones. 

188 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

Emerson had his ideal, and he knew that he fell 
short of it. Many think that his '* Humble-Bee " 
is his most exquisite poem : — 

'^ Burly, dozing humble-bee ! 

• • • • • 

Zigzag stecrer, desert cheerer, 

• • • • • 

Yellow-breeched philosopher." 

He shows patriotism in ''The Volunteers"; his 
Nature sympathy in ''The Woodnotes''; his reli- 
gious outlook in " The Problem "; and his grief for 
his boy Waldo, who died at five, in " Threnody." 
And there are in his two volumes of poetry many 
rare gems of hopeful, uplifting thought. Indeed, 
he has sometimes been called " Optimist of Opti- 
mists." 

Emerson is to-day read by the few, for the Anglo- 
Saxon mind seeks definiteness and his new reasoning 
is not fully interpreted. His work is a curious com- 
bination of common sense and mysticism. His 
views of the whence and the wherefore seem like 
those of the Orientals, nebulous and problematical. 
He is frequently styled " The Buddha of the 
West " — and he was likewise " A soaring nature 
ballasted with sense." 

His son. Dr. Emerson, seldom presumed to ask a 
very serious question. He says : " I ventured to ask 
my father what he thought about immortality — and 

189 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

this was the answer : * I think we may be sure that 
whatever may come after death, no one will be dis- 
appointed.' '' 

In 1847, Emerson visited Europe for the second 
time in a literary tour, and his lecture, '' Representa- 
tive Men," was a marked success, and this furnished 
material for a volume, in 1850. He spent four days 
with Carlyle, ajid he describes his talk as *' like a 
river, full and never ceasing." Among others that 
he met were De Quincey, Macaulay, Thackeray, 
Tennyson, and George Eliot. The latter rejoiced 
that in Emerson she beheld a man! He saw Paris 
in the throes of the Revolution of '48. He must 
have been held in high repute in England, for on 
his return, he was nominated to the Rectorship of 
Glasgow University, receiving five hundred votes 
against Lord Beaconsfield's seven hundred. 

Coming back to America, he settled down again 
in his Concord home, and as the years rolled on, his 
character grew more and more tranquil. He was 
interested in the schools and reading-room and be- 
longed to the fire-brigade. He advised the farmers 
and traders on philosophical subjects, and always ob- 
served the old-time road custom of salutation to 
passers-by. 

Emerson had no skill in debate, but from principle 
attended political meetings. He was in spirit an 
abolitionist but he ranked brotherhood above patriot- 
ism. Concord, with both war and literary associa- 

190 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

tions, had many '' high days/' and Emerson was 
constantly asked to speak at such celebrations. 

One of the special town interests was a/' Circle of 
Twenty-five,'' that met on Monday evenings, in his 
library; and here as one has said: *' Emerson sought 
to bind all the wide-flying embroidery of discussion 
into a web of clear, good sense." '' The Circle " 
still exists ; and some of the older ones yet remember 
the day when it numbered among its members sub- 
lime Dr. Alcott, EUery Channing, Thoreau, and 
Hawthorne who sat apart and and rarely spoke. 

In 1872, Emerson's house caught fire and was 
nearly destroyed, and the family barely escaped with 
scant clothing; and now his admiring towns-people 
begged him to take his devoted daughter Ellen and 
go abroad until all should be restored; and they went, 
and this time sailed up the Nile. Concord prepared 
an ovation to greet the home-coming of its *' Sage." 
The bells rang as the station was reached; men, wom- 
en and children thronged to welcome him; he was 
taken into his perfectly renewed house, under a 
triumphal arch. *' I am not wood or stone," he ex- 
claimed, but he could say only a few words. 

And now as Emerson grew older, his powers of 
memory began to fail. John Burroughs — our be- 
loved poet-naturalist, in reminiscing of his own early 
days writes: — 

" I was an ardent disciple of Emerson and I wrote sub- 
consciously in Emersonian style. . . • The musk of 

191 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Emerson was on the garments of all of us young men who 
were writing at that time, and even now I sometimes get a 
whiff of it in my writings/' 

Burroughs met Emerson near the close of his life 
and said: '^ He could not speak to us for his mind 
was breaking down and he was losing his memory of 
men and faces. He sat there silent, with a wonder- 
ful look in his deep, far-seeing astral eyes." 

Whittier took me up to introduce me. He did 
not remember me. Whittier said: ''Thee knows 
him!" but when I started to ask Emerson about 
Thoreau, he seemed to understand, for he beckoned 
to a common friend to come and tell me about 
him. 

Finally, on April twenty-seventh, 1882, '' The Con- 
cord Sage," sank peacefully to rest, and he was 
buried near Hawthorne, in Sleepy Hollow Ceme- 
tery; and ever the pines which soothed him keep 
watch over his unhewn granite boulder on the hill- 
side. 

After his death, his son. Dr. Emerson, one of the 
citizens of whom Concord proudly boasts, gave Mr. 
Cabot the facts and incidents of his father's life, 
which he himself wrote for neighbours and near 
friends ; and we have drawn our incidents from these 
memoirs and from a visit to the home of the great 
thinker. The library is just as he left it; his chair 
is in place and his pen and inkstand on the table; 

192 




CO 

CO 



Q 
P^ 
O 
U 

:2; 
o 
u 

% 

o 

CO 
W 

w 
o 

Q 
< 

cu 
< 

O 
w 

o 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

Michael Angelo's '^ Three Fates'' over the mantel; 
and on the shelves gift-books inscribed with the 
names of noted authors. 

The whole house, mounted in its old mahogany 
furniture, with art treasures and pictures, is delight- 
fully reminiscent. There are busts of Plato and 
Goethe, and certainly two pictures of special signifi- 
cance — one brought to Emerson from Europe by 
Margaret Fuller, and while she was shipwrecked it 
floated ashore, and was marked with his name. An- 
other, Guido's " Aurora," was sent by Carlyle as a 
wedding present to Mrs. Emerson, and on the back 
we read in the donor's writing: — 

" It is my wife's memorial to your wife. Two houses 
divided by wide seas are to understand always that they are 
united nevertheless. Will the lady of Concord hang up the 
Italian sun-chariot somewhere in her drawing-room, and 
looking at it, think sometimes of a household here which 
has good cause never to forget her ? '* 

— T. Carlyle. 

And after rambling over the house, one must not 
fail to lock out upon the same pines and chestnuts, 
the old-fashioned garden, and the woods and river, 
whence came many inspirations. 

At the Emerson '* Centenary," in Concord, in 
1903, William Lorenzo Eaton, superintendent of 
public schools, made an address before the pupils, 
in which he said : — 

193 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" Hitch your waggon to yonder star, and with him travel 
into unexplored depths of space; watch the birds in their 
flight and where they rest, and name them without a 
gun. . . . 

" In the long winter evenings when mayhap the snow is 
swirling around your house, and shuts you from the outer 
world, take down your volume of Emerson, and in ' a tu- 
multuous privacy of storm ' read and think, and think and 
read, until something coming to you out of that great spirit 
shall have moulded your lives to nobler thoughts and 
deeds/* 

SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON 

** O tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his l)lue urn with fire/' 
— Concord Ode. 

" Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk? 
• •••••• 

be my friend, and teach me to be thine." 

— Forbearance. 

" Life is too short to waste 
In critic peep or cynic bark, 
Quarrel or reprimand, 
'Twill soon be dark." 

— Tact. 

" I thought the sparrow's note from heaven 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 

1 brought him home, in his nest, at even ; 
He sings the song, but it pleases not now; 

194 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 

For I did not bring home the river and sky ; 
He sang to my ear- — they sang to my eye." 

— Each and AIL 



a y 



Twas one of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow, 
The wind may alter twenty ways, 

A tempest cannot blow; 
It may blow north, it still is warm; 

Or south, it still is clear; 
Or east, it smells like a clover farm; 

Or west, no thunder fear." 

— Woodnotes, 

** The Mountain and the Squirrel 
Had a quarrel, 

And the former called the latter * Little Prig!' 
Bun replied, 

* You are doubtless very big, 
But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together 
To make up a year, 
And a sphere; 
And I think it no disgrace 
To occupy my place; 
If Fm not so large as you, 
You are not so small as I, 
And not half so spry; 
ril not deny you make 
A very pretty squirrel track. 
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; 
If I cannot carry forests on my back. 
Neither can you crack a nut.' " 

— Emerson, 



195 



XXII 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) 

One of the Concord group held fast to the town all 
through life, even spending his travel days in the 
woods, and on near-by streams. This was Henry 
David Thoreau, who was born here in 18 17. The 
father of French descent was a small, deaf, unob- 
trusive man, who made lead-pencils, while the 
mother, daughter of a New England clergyman, was 
very dressy and very talkative. 

Thoreau's delightful biographer, Frank Sanborn, 
tells of her such a characteristic story that we must 
insert it right here: One day when Mrs. Thoreau 
was seventy years old, she called upon Miss Mary 
Emerson, the austere aunt of '' The Sage," who was 
then eighty-four. She wore a bonnet adorned with 
bright ribbons of goodly length. During the call 
Miss Emerson kept her eyes closed, and when her 
guest rose to leave, she said: *' Perhaps you noticed, 
Mrs. Thoreau, that I kept my eyes closed during your 
call; I did so because I did not wish to look on the 
ribbons you are wearing, so unsuitable for a child of 
God and a person of your age ! " 

Such were the parents ; while the boy Henry, from 
earliest childhood, displayed a stubborn will which 

196 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) 

made it difficult to direct him in '* the way he should 
go." He was, however, fitted at the Concord Acad- 
emy to enter Harvard, where he graduated in 1837. 
As a profession, he tried school-teaching but not with 
marked ability, but he lectured year after year in the 
*' Concord Lyceum " course. He also worked at 
the lead-pencil craft; but when he had succeeded in 
producing the best kind of pencil, he refused to make 
another, for with other Transcendentalists, he held 
to the belief of never doing the same thing twice. 

He was very skilful with tools, and had a good 
knowledge of mathematics, so he became both car- 
penter and surveyor; and did his work so well that 
the neighbours liked to employ him. His idea of 
thoroughness was — in driving a nail home — " to 
clench it so faithfully that you can wake up in the 
night and think of your work with satisfaction!" 
Although Thoreau was always poor, earning a liveli- 
hood never troubled him much — he wished just 
jnoney enough to live. 

His wealth was in the woods and on the streams, 
and he sought '* a wide margin of leisure," in which 
to enjoy it. Sometimes he would spend weeks earn- 
ing money to last for a certain period, and then he 
would stop and enter into his Nature study, until his 
funds were exhausted. He delighted in the ser- 
mons of his lay preacher, Emerson, for if any one 
ever believed in a gospel of individualism, it was 
Thoreau, and Emerson helped him in many ways. 

197 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He would often meet him on his walks, carrying un- 
der his arm a music-book to press plants, and in his 
pocket drawing-pencils, microscope, jack-knife, and 
twine. 

From the day he graduated, to the end of his short 
life, Thoreau kept a journal, which was chiefly de- 
scriptive of his out-of-door observations. With his 
brother he studied the motion of fishes and the flight 
of birds, until the two were able to fashion a boat 
and rig it. This they loaded with potatoes and 
melons and started on a trip — a trip probably as 
important to Thoreau as that on the Nile to Sir 
Samuel Baker; for in 1849, ^^ published a book 
about it, entitled '' A Week on the Concord and Mer- 
rimac." 

This has many picturesque descriptions, and in- 
cludes reminiscences of Indian and pioneer life and 
of the Puritanical observance of the Sabbath. But 
alas ! for the edition of a thousand volumes — over 
seven hundred were unsold, and Thoreau brought 
them home and laughingly told of the unexpected 
addition to his library. The book, however, is more 
valued to-day. 

His " Walden,'' published several years later, gave 
him more immediate fame. This was the recountal 
of a two years' sojourn in the woods. This wood- 
land belonged to Emerson ; here it was that the phil- 
osopher often lingered with his muse who guided his 
facile pen through his " Woodnotes." In the cen- 

198 




w 
Q 
.J 
< 

<: 

> 
o 
o 

< 

o 

Q 

:z 

I— I 
<: 
u 

< 
w 
pri 
O 

h 
w 

h 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) 

tre, in its setting of pines and oaks, nestles a clear 
little pond with a pebbly beach, and over it hovers an 
Indian legend whence it derives its name; for it is 
said that one day in the ages agone, the Indians were 
holding a wicked pow-wow on the hill just beyond, 
and there was so much swearing that the hill col- 
lapsed, and all the naughty tongues were swallowed 
up. But one good squaw — Walden — was saved, 
and Walden Woods and Walden Pond perpetuate 
her virtues. 

Thoreau did not come as a hermit as many have 
asserted, but he wished to live deliberately and eco- 
nomically, and he had work to do that he could better 
accomplish alone with Nature. His friends aided 
him in raising a hut that was curtainless and lockless, 
and that held the simplest furniture. Here he con- 
sorted with his guests, many of them coming from 
curiosity, others like Emerson, Alcott and Curtis, to 
discuss weighty subjects. 

Thoreau's expenses here amounted to twenty-seven 
cents a day. He called himself a ** self-appointed 
inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms," and to the 
tenants of the forest and water, he became a kind of 
St. Francis. *' He learned to sit so immovable upon 
a rock that the bird, reptile or fish that had retired, 
would return. Snakes coiled about his legs; fishes 
swam into his hand; foxes fled to him for protection 
from the hunter; and birds would hop upon his 
shoulder, even while he dug his little bean-patch." 

199 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He was like the man of whom '* Quaint Old Thomas 
Fuller " writes: — 

" Either he had told the bees things, or the bees had told 
him!'' 

Open " Walden " anywhere and you will find an 
interesting page. This one, for example : — 

** Let us spend our day as deliberately as Nature, and not 
be thrown off the track by every nut-shell and mosquito- 
wing that falls on the rail. Let us rise early and fast or 
break'isist gently and without perturbation; let company 
come and let company go; let the bells ring and the chil- 
dren cry. Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that 
terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner. Weather this 
danger and you are safe, for the rest of the w^ay is down- 
hill." 

And here is another extract in which he talks of 
the pickerel of Walden Pond as if they were fabu- 
lous fishes : — 

" They are so foreign to the woods, foreign as Arabia to 
our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and tran- 
scendental beauty which separates them by a wide interval 
from the cadaverous cod and haddock, whose fame is im- 
paled in our streets. They are not green like the pines, 
nor grey like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they 
have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colours, like flowers 
and precious stones. . . . They are Walden all over 
and all through; are themselves small Waldens, in the ani- 

200 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) 

mal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are 
caught here — that in this deep and capacious spring far 
beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs 
that travel the Walden road this great gold and emerald 
fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market ; 
it would be the cynosure of all eyes there.'* 

Thoreau stayed at the pond for two years, coquet- 
ting with Nature, alert to every sight and sound, and 
*' Walden " for its clear and exact details has passed 
into a classic. It is not so introspective but more 
crisp and fuller of life than his *' Week on the Con- 
cord and Merrimac." His *' Church of Sunday- 
Walkers to Walden Pond " was most active in his 
time; and the pilgrimage still keeps on, and on the 
road one may meet travellers from all parts of the 
world, and each one adds a memorial stone to the 
cairn that stands on the site of the old hut. 

The two books named were all that Thoreau pub- 
lished; but after his death, selections were made from 
his journal, so that now his works include nine or 
ten volumes. His " Maine Woods," *' Cape Cod,'' 
and *' A Yankee in Canada," are used as guide- 
books. There are many more Nature-lovers now 
than in his day, and in this enthusiasm which Thoreau 
so really aroused, his books hold their own niche in 
American literature. 

Thoreau was not in any sense a misanthrope as 
one may find in visiting his Concord home. He was 
devoted to young people, and with his flute and 

20 1 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

bright anecdotes, he liked to make merry, and was 
easily the centre of any gathering. On the other 
hand, he revelled in solitude, and it must be granted 
that he did live a life of eccentricities and negations. 
He never ate much or drank wine, or used a trap or 
gun; he never went to church and never married; 
he had a contempt for elegant society, always avoid- 
ing inns, dwelling instead in the house of the farmer 
or fisherman, and yet his ancestry and belongings 
were those of refinement. 

He would never pay his taxes, and spent certainly 
one night in prison, because — as he said — he would 
not give money to the collector to support slavery. 
His description of this night is amusing. He says : — 

" I was put in jail just as I was going to the shoemaker to 
get a shoe which was mended. . . . I lay in bed and 
it seemed as if I had never heard the town-clock strike be- 
fore nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept 
with the windows open which were inside the grating. It 
was to see my native village in the light of the Middle 
Ages, and our Concord River was changed into a Rhine 
stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. 
When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish 
my errand, and having put on my mended shoe, joined a 
huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves 
under my conduct ! " 

With all Thoreau's peculiarities, he was on the 
whole a vigorous and brave-hearted American. His 
life was a short one, for undue exposure ended in 

202 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) 

consumption and he died at forty-five, and was buried 
near Emerson in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. A line 
of a prayer that he wrote may be suggestive of his 
religious feeling : — 

*' Whatever we leave to God, God blesses." 

In the rooms of the '' Antiquarian Society," in 
Concord, are preserved many articles which he used 
at Walden: the bed, rocking-chair and table; a 
dresser filled with dishes matched and unmatched, 
among them a Lowenstoft bowl; a desk, containing 
with other things his Bible, and copy of *' Paradise 
Lost," a picture of John Brown, inscribed with 
" Farewell, God bless you," and his grandfather's 
Chinese spectacles. 

But one gets very close to Thoreau, in the privilege 
of meeting his biographer, Frank Sanborn, who for 
two years dined with him almost daily, joining him 
on his walks and river voyages. Mr. Sanborn is 
one of the famous Concord coterie, who, apart from 
his literary biographies and his influence in establish- 
ing the *' Concord School of Philosophy," is noted for 
the reckless zeal with which he threw himself into 
the anti-slavery crusade — even to the shielding of 
John Brown, and it is a rare pleasure to hear him 
converse familiarly on many subjects. He is Con- 
cord's twentieth century scholar. 

And there is yet one other of whom we would 

203 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

speak — through whose influence Thoreau's spirit 
will ever be kept alive — and this is our gentle 
*' Naturalist-Philosopher," John Burroughs. He 
resembles Thoreau in his Nature-love and Nature- 
touch and Nature-vision, but he is not so eccentric. 
Dr. Mabie says: — 

" Thoreau would have devoted more time to a wood- 
chuck than to Carlyle, Arnold, or Whitman, while Bur- 
roughs emphasises his indebtedness to the authors. His 
IS a broader outlook, and we are thankful to-day to have a 
sunny, inspiring guide to '* fresh fields'* and ** pastures 
new." 

Truly with Robert Louis Stevenson we feel that 

" To live close to Nature is to keep your soul alive." 



204 



XXIII 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

'* He was makin' himser a' the time, but he dinna 
ken may be what he was about till years had passed." 
So said Shortreid of Sir Walter Scott, " Wizard of 
the North " — and so say we of our Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, *' Wizard of New England.'* 

Bold ancestors had our '' Wizard " : one of Revo- 
lutionary fame; another, a stern old judge, known 
for bitter denouncement of witches. His father, a 
sea-captain, lived in a small gambrel-roofed house 
which may still be seen in Salem, and here on July 
Fourth, 1804, Nathaniel was born, and he was only 
four years old when his father died in South Amer- 
ica. 

The beautiful mother, overcome with grief, liter- 
ally withdrew herself from society for forty years, 
even taking her meals apart from her children, and 
as they caught her sad spirit, their childhood fell 
away from them. Nathaniel inherited from his 
mother a shyness and love of solitude that were only 
partially conquered long afterwards when he went 
abroad. Even as a boy, strange fancies haunted 
him and he invented odd stories. 

His boyhood was varied by a sojourn of a year or 

205 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

two with an uncle who owned a large tract of pri- 
meval forest, on the banks of Sebago Lake, Maine. 
Here — " free as a bird in the air " — he skated and 
swam and fished and devoured books, but this way of 
existence only increased his longing to be alone ; and 
without conscious effort, the sensitive, earnest youth, 
was lured on by his muse into paths of weird, haunted 
lore. She interested him alike in studying the char- 
acter of the sternest New England Puritan ; in Shakes- 
peare's dramas, and Bunyan's allegory; and she 
made Spenser's *' Fairie Queene " so fascinating 
that with his first money he bought a copy and stored 
his mind with many fanciful visions. But it was 
long before these took definite form in his soul, and 
in the meantime, we glance at the practical years 
that intervened. 

In 1 82 1, Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College, 
and the very handsome, athletic youth, with his 
'' tremulous sapphire eyes," won the admiration of 
his classmates. They nicknamed him *'Oberon!" 
and an old gipsy, meeting him one day, asked: " Are 
you man or angel? " Longfellow, Franklin Pierce, 
and Horatio Bridge were members of the class, and 
all became life-long friends. Pierce and Bridge 
were always encouraging Hawthorne, and prophesy- 
ing his future success. 

He graduated in 1825, and went home to Salem 
and lived there for years, just like his mother, as a 
recluse, perhaps only venturing out after dark to 

206 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

walk on the lone sea-shore. But he was continually 
writing, and often burning what he wrote, for as he 
later said: *' I waited a long time for the world to 
know me." But his grasp grew firmer, and short 
stories appeared in the serials by an anonymous au- 
thor. In 1837, they were gathered into a slender 
volume called *' Twice-Told Tales,'' because they 
had already been printed. The book was welcomed 
by the reading world; and Longfellow who now had 
won fame for his poems was among the first to honour 
Hawthorne, and even critical Poe foretold his future 
greatness. 

About this time Bancroft, the historian, was col- 
lector at the port of Boston, and through his influence, 
Hawthorne was made weigher and gauger there, 
and we catch glimpses of our gentle dreamer, weigh- 
ing coal and overhauling ships. But presently poli- 
tics changed: he lost his position but had earned one 
thousand dollars which he was enabled to put into 
the Brook Farm enterprise. 

The Brook Farm episode which comes next is asso- 
ciated with the romantic period of Hawthorne's 
career when he was in love — and like many another 
lover and many another literary man, he was led 
astray by the '* isms " of his day. He lived for a 
year at Brook Farm, assisting much in the hard 
work, and very little in the conversations. Mar- 
garet Fuller then edited ** The Dial " and flashed 
out in all her brilliancy; and Hawthorne milked a 

207 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

cow, and expounded on the fractious character of 
Margaret Fuller's transcendental heifer! 

This gifted woman must have impressed him, for 
years later in his " Blithedale Romance" — which 
contains artistic and humorous accounts of Brook 
Farm happenings — he introduces ** Zenobia," his 
most dramatic female character, and many think that 
it is a reproduction of the ardent prophetess. But 
she was not his true love — that was the delightful 
Sophia Peabody whom he married in 1842, and 
never did wife more gladden and enrich the life of 
husband. They took up their abode in the '' Old 
Manse," at Concord, associated with ancestral 
Emersons and Ripleys. 

Hawthorne describes it In his ** Mosses " as a 
house that a priest had built, and other priests had 
lived in, and it was " awful to reflect how many ser- 
mons must have been written there "; but he added a 
hope that '' wisdom would descend " upon him — 
and it did as we shall see. He took for his study 
the room in which Emerson had written *' Nature," 
and for three years filled it with gleaming visions of 
fancy and allegory — and what were some of the 
** Mosses " that were rooted here? Among them 
are the unresting " Old Apple-Dealer," " Rappac- 
cini's Daughter," " Birds and Bird Voices," and 
numerous *' Sketches from Memory." Perhaps the 
most assertive ** Moss " is *' The Town-Pump," 
** that all day long at the busiest corner poured forth 

208 




CO 
CO 

< 
d 

O 

o 
o 

CO 

< 
o 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

alike a stream of eloquence and a stream of water." 
It held stoutly to the fact that it was '' Town Treas- 
urer," " Overseer of the Poor," *' Head of the Fire 
Department," and '' Cup-Bearer to the Parched Pop- 
ulation," always discharging its duties " in a cool, 
steady, upright, downright " way. 

But charming beyond all was the " Old Manse " 
itself which Hawthorne literally wrote into renown; 
the '' Mosses " grew year by year, until there were 
enough to gather into a book. Many visited the 
house, and Mrs. Hawthorne was a gracious hostess 
— and allowed her husband to maintain his usual 
aloofness. The river was just back of the sloping 
meadow. Thoreau had sold Hawthorne a boat and 
taught him to paddle, so it was easy to escape — 
specially if he saw Dr. Alcott approaching to advo- 
cate Transcendentalism, which Hawthorne detested. 
Emerson sometimes broke in upon his musings, and 
when Franklin Pierce came, the whole town was in- 
vited to meet him. 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe writes playfully of her 
first visit. Mrs. Hawthorne received her most 
charmingly, promising that she should know her 
husband. Presently a figure descended the stairs. 
'* My Husband," cried Mrs. Hawthorne, *' here 
are Dr. and Mrs. Howe I " What they did see, was 
a broad hat, pulled down over a hidden face, and a 
figure that quickly vanished through an opposite door, 
and Mrs. Hawthorne made some excuse about an 

209 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

appointment which called her husband to go up the 
river with Thoreau. And Mrs. Howe adds naively : 
" So the first time I saw Hawthorne — I did not see 
him!" Many like pleasing reminiscences — from 
the attic " Saints' Room " to the peaceful river — 
are recalled as we are permitted to enter this old 
romantic *' Manse." 

But in Hawthorne's day, literature was too poorly 
paid to support a family; and in 1845, through the 
kindness of friends, he was appointed surveyor at the 
custom-house, in Salem — a town that from earliest 
boyhood had made upon him a curious impression. 
Here he was interviewed by all manner of folk on 
all manner of subjects, and he noted down scenes 
and characters for future use. Custom-house doings 
would have seemed prosaic to most men, but un- 
ceasingly " a romance was growling " in Hawthorne's 
brain; and when after four years, he lost his office, 
owing to political changes, he took from the drawer 
a half-finished manuscript. His wife was rejoiced 
— she had saved money for household expenses, and 
he should write! 

Now he spent a winter upon his first long work, 
" The Scarlet Letter " — a tale of sin and penalty — 
the theme taken from a letter embroidered upon a 
mantle. He brooded over it and shaped the moral, 
and so felt its pathos that he grew thinner and 
thinner, and '* a knot of sorrow appeared in his 
forehead." He became so oblivious to his surround- 

210 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

ings that his wife one day found in her basket a piece 
of work cut up into bits. Indeed, he had a habit of 
whittling off his table and the arms of his chair as 
he wrote. 

When the story was finished, Hawthorne read it 
to his wife, until she was overcome and pressed her 
hands to her ears — for she could listen no longer. 
So he knew that it must have force, and he sent it 
to his optimistic friend, James T. Fields, the pub- 
lisher, who sat up all night to read it through, and 
then, in 1880, it belonged to the public. It tells of 
only four lives, but it presents so really the manners 
and morals of an earlier period, that it will ever be 
an artistic and powerful masterpiece of Puritan liter- 
ature. 

To-day, in Salem, we may visit the tall, grim house 
haunted with secrets, where lived Hester Prynne and 
little Pearl. The introductory chapter to ^' The 
Scarlet Letter," which is exceedingly humourous, 
relieves the sombre tale which did offend for a while 
the good people of Salem, who thought that they 
recognised in it sketches of old officials; indeed they 
neither knew nor wished to know the morbid author 
who spent his days in writing stories and his nights 
in burning them. But now Salem speaks the name 
of Hawthorne with reverence; and with the aid of 
Rudyard Kipling, the town is attempting to raise 
fifty thousand dollars for his monument. 

The financial gains from ** The Scarlet Letter " 

211 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

were so great that Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to a] 
friend as follows : *' Will you ask father to go to 
Earle's and order for Mr. Hawthorne a suit of 
clothes; the coat to be of broadcloth of six or seven 
dollars a yard; the pantaloons of Kerseymere or 
broadcloth to correspond; and the rest of satin — all 
to be black." 

And now, not long afterwards, there came yet an- 
other family move — this time to what Hawthorne 
called '' The ugliest little farmhouse in the Lenox 
woods." His friends, however, thought it the 
cosiest kind of home. Among his writings here was 
the " Wonder-Book for Children." He loved chil- 
dren and entered into their every caprice — and his 
daughter says ** there never was such a playmate " — 
and he was constantly telling stories. Years before, 
his '' Grandfather's Chair " had introduced them to 
historical New England, even from the landing of 
the Mayflower; and now the " Wonder-Book " and 
*' Tanglewood Tales " laid open such marvellous 
legends of old romance which go right to the heart 
of a child; and in their mythical and moral setting 
— these books are among the loveliest of young peo- 
ple's classics. 

Perhaps one of these most typical stories is the 
" Snow Image," which tells of the statue fashioned 
by two children. Then Jack Frost and the West 
Wind endowed it with life, and it became a little snow- 
sister, and a source of every-day happiness. But the 

212 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

practical father disenchanted the children, and de- 
stroyed their ideal — leaving only the moral ! 

While in the Lenox woods, Hawthorne wrote his 
" House of the Seven Gables " — which portrays the 
fulfilment of a curse upon the distant descendants of 
a wrong-doer. In this house in Salem, dwelt stern, 
Puritanical Hepzibah Pyncheon and her brother Clif- 
ford, and Phoebe is the ray of sunshine that brings 
custom to the cent-shop. In the book, again four 
Puritan characters are drawn with the realism of a 
tiny Dutch picture, and while planning it, Haw- 
thorne wrote one day : — 

" My house of the seven gables is so to speak finished ; 
only I am hammering away a little on the roof and doing 
up a few jobs that were left incomplete/' 

The plot was less gloomy than that of *' The Scarlet 
Letter," and like that was quickly successful. 

And now, in 1852, Hawthorne returned to Con- 
cord, and bought one of Dr. Alcott's old homes. He 
christened it '' The Wayside," for he said that he was 
pausing " by the wayside of life." But he was 
hardly settled, before his college friend, Franklin 
Pierce, now President of the United States, appointed 
him consul to Liverpool; and in 1853, he went with 
his family abroad, and was gone for seven years. 
During the first four, in the consulate, he became 
familiar with English life; then resigning his posi- 

213 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

tion, he travelled on the Continent, and lingered suf- 
ficiently long in Rome and Florence to gather ma- 
terials for his '^ Marble Faun." Italy fascinated 
him, and Rome drew itself into his heart " as even 
little Concord or sleepy old Salem never did." It 
was curious but it seemed strangely homelike. In the 
Palazzo Barberini, the favourite meeting-place of 
Americans, he came in touch with foreigners and 
countrymen. He dined with T. B. Read, met Gib- 
son and Story, walked with Motley, found in Mrs. 
Jameson a sensible old lady, took tea with Frederica 
Bremer, '' the funniest little old lady," and later on 
in Florence greatly enjoyed the Brownings. 

Among works of art, he found special beauty in 
Praxiteles's '' Marble Faun," with which he some- 
how associated all kinds of fun and pathos; and he 
saw a young man that to his mind resembled it, and 
from the two, he evolved the title of his romance. 
And he determined to bring in Torro del Simio, with 
its legend of light ever burning at the *^ Virgin's 
Shrine," and another romance began to shape itself, 
and he commenced to work it out in Rome, and con- 
tinued it in the Florentine villa where he later so- 
journed. That had a moss-grown, tradition-haunted 
tower, just the thing to clap into the project, and once 
more four characters stand out — but against a Roman 
background. 

These are Kenyon, the sculptor, Donatello, ^*the 
Faun," Miriam the artist, and Hilda, the Puritan 

214 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

maid, who copied masterpieces and tended the Vir- 
gin's lamp in the tower. The romance conceived in 
Italy was ended in England. " The Marble Faun " 
is shadowy and mysterious. Possibly its fame rests 
rather on its being such an excellent guide-book for 
Rome rather than on the thread of story running 
through it. 

After seven years' absence, we find Hawthorne at 
" The Wayside," and here he spent the last four 
years of his life. On his arrival, Emerson tendered 
him a reception, and all were surprised at the ease 
and grace of manner acquired by social intercourse 
in Europe. He enlarged the house, adding among 
other conveniences a tower to which he might readily 
retreat. He planted trees, arranged woodland 
walks, and was much disappointed that he could not 
make the place resemble an English park. His 
favourite resort was the hillside back of the house, 
where for hours he would pace back and forth, lis- 
tening to the music of the pines, and thinking 
thoughts ; then he would hurry up to the turret-room 
and note them down, or sometimes climb up many 
steps to write in his rural bower. Here he converted 
his ''English Notes" into "^Our Old Home," one 
of his most interesting works, descriptive of his con- 
sular life. 

Here, too, he outlined and began to write his 
*' DoUiver Romance," which he had promised *' The 
Atlantic Monthly." He did not live to complete 

215 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

It. He " let fall the pen and left the tale half- 
told." 

He enjoyed the gatherings of " The Circle," held 
as we have said on Monday evenings, at Emerson^s. 
His evenings at home were always delightful. The 
family assembled about the astral lamp — Mrs. 
Hawthorne with her work — and the young people 
eager-eyed — while the father read aloud. He 
made the world of Nature and of life beautiful to 
them. Rose once said: " The presence of my father 
filled my heart "; and Julian told of the home when 
he became his father's intimate biographer. 

One thing, however, sorely distressed the great 
romancer, and this was the national storm that gath- 
ered, and in 1861, burst into Civil War. Then al- 
most abruptly his health gave way; he took short 
trips with his son to Boston and Washington or to 
some near-by seaside resort, but he did not grow 
better ; and finally he was persuaded to go on another 
journey with his old friend, Ex-President Pierce, and 
he died suddenly, at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on 
May eighteenth, 1864. 

Upon his cofiin was placed his " tale half-told," 
and a wreath of apple-blossoms from the *' Manse." 
In the procession that followed him to his burial 
were Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Agassiz, Whip- 
pie, Dr. Alcott, and Fields, and his best-loved Chan- 
ning and Pierce; and James Freeman Clarke said 
over his remains the last sad service, and he was laid 

216 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

to rest in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near ** the hill- 
top hearsed with pines." 

Hawthorne was a man of deep and reverent reli- 
gious faith. He loved his Bible, and wished that it 
were published in small volumes that he might carry 
it in his pocket. Possessed of unusual magnetism, 
he was so reserved that he was understood by few 
— literally a gentle-rmn. Emerson discovered in 
him a strongly feminine element. He was devoted 
to his family, his intimate friends, flowers and pets, 
and was seldom at ease in a social function for he 
lived in a magical region all his own. Emerson, in 
his tribute, says: *' He rode so well his horse of the 
night," and Stedman begins his poem on Hawthorne 
with the following lines : — 

" Two natures in him strove 
Like day with night, his sunshine and his gloom.'* 

With unique creative art, he pictured to the world 
as no other has done the New England Puritan con- 
science — he revealed souls rather than faces — and 
he gave it a symbolic setting; and Moncure Conway 
says that *' unlike many others, Hawthorne wrote 
himself out." 

To-day, Mrs. Lothrop, the widow of the pub- 
lisher, owns '' The Wayside." We know her better 
as ^* Margaret Sidney," the author, who, with lively 
imagination and rare story-telling gift, has brought 

217 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

into being ** The Five Little Peppers." It is such a 
pleasure to hear her tell how these little *' Peppers," 
in thought, came to stay with her and follow her 
everywhere — until at last she could not help setting 
down some of their doings. She sent the manu- 
script to ''Wide Awake"; the children called for 
more; and as the "Peppers" grew up, their most 
original words and deeds filled eleven volumes of 
stories. 

Mrs. Lothrop, with tact and exquisite taste, has 
preserved Hawthorne's home as nearly as possible 
as it was in his day. There is the same dining-room 
where '' the sunshine comes in warmly and brightly 
thro' the better half of a winter's day " ; Haw- 
thorne's bedroom; the table upon which he and his 
wife revised manuscripts; the tower-study with its 
remarkable pictorial illustrations, and the standing- 
desk where he wrote ; and back of the house the pine- 
clad slope which Mrs. Hawthorne named his 
'' Mount of Vision." The '' School of Philosophy " 
is near, with closed doors. 

Here it was, at '' The Wayside," that Mrs. Lo- 
throp planned a Hawthorne ''Centenary"; and on 
July fourth, fifth and sixth, 1904, many eminent men 
and women gathered in this building to honour the 
memory of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here on the hill- 
side Beatrice Hawthorne, granddaughter of " The 
Wizard of New England," unveiled a bronze tablet, 
set in a rough boulder, on which is inscribed ; — 

218 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 

*' This tablet placed 

At the centennial exercises 

July 4, 1904 

Commemorates 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

He trod daily this path to the hill 

To formulate 

As he paced to and fro 

Upon Its summit 

His marvellous romances." 

And was there ever such another town as Concord ! 
For apart from those of whom we have spoken, it 
cherishes memories of Webster and Kossuth and 
Agassiz and Lafayette and Harriet Hosmer; yes — 
and of many more who came either '* to drink in wis- 
dom " at its '* School of Philosophy," or to bask in 
the presence of its sages. Thein Concord has its 
battle-ground and monuments and inscribed tablets; 
Its literary homes; its library, with one alcove given 
to its own authors; and its Sleepy Hollow Cemetery 
— ** voiceless yet eloquent with great names.'* 



219 



XXIV 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) 

In a great square house in Portland, " City by the 
Sea," on February twenty-seventh, 1807, Henry W. 
Longfellow was born. It was a quiet, well-ordered 
home, with a winsome mother, devoted to art, music, 
and poetry — the father, a leading lawyer and mem- 
ber of Congress. From the former, the boy inher- 
ited a love for those things that made him as a man, 
the most popular poet in America; from the latter, 
genuine courtesy, and clear, practical habits of 
thought and action. And there was for him, also, 
another source of wealth: the perpetual fascination 
of the rock-girt bay, with sunrise and moonlight play- 
ing over it — the sleet and storm and fog-bell — the 
beacon-light, and the sunny isles — all these very 
early inspired him with 

" The beauty and the mystery of ships, 
And the magic of the sea/' 

Henry was a most youthful prodigy. He at- 
tended a dame's school at three; was half through 
his Latin grammar at seven ; was delighted with Irv- 
ing's *' Sketch-Book " at twelve; and at thirteen, 
slipped his first poem, '' The Battle of Lovell's 

220 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Pond," into the letter-box of " The Portland Ga- 
zette." Two or three times he peeked into the win- 
dow to see the printers at work upon the paper ; and 
his joy was equal to that of Whittier's, on a similar 
occasion, when he saw his verses in print. Long 
years later, he said: *' I don't think any other liter- 
ary success in my life has made me quite so happy." 

At fourteen, Longfellow entered Hawthorne's 
class at Bowdoin College; and his studious and genial 
nature made him friends among both professors and 
students. He had already determined to be eminent 
in something, and it was during his four years here 
that he more and more eagerly aspired to a 
literary career. The prudent father looked coldly 
on such a project, for literature would never give his 
son support. So the latter finally decided on law 
for his " real existence," while literature should be 
his " ideal one." 

However, good fortune waited on him, for it ap- 
pears that Madame Bowdoin had left one thousand 
dollars in her will, to establish in the college a 
chair of modern languages. The faculty appreciated 
Longfellow's scholarly way and the ease with which 
he mastered a foreign tongue, and they knew his 
great desire. So young as he was, he was offered the 
professorship, if he would first go abroad and qual- 
ify for it, and he sailed away and was gone three 
years. He worked very hard and returned a master 
in French, Spanish, Italian, and German; and in 

221 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1829, when but twenty-two years old, entered upon 
his college duties. He prepared his own text-books, 
kept well abreast of his pupils, and filled them with 
enthusiasm for their work. 

In 1831, he married "a beauteous being," Miss 
Mary Potter. Two years later, he published 
** Outre-Mer,'* a collection of sketches, describing 
his life abroad. They resemble Irving's, though 
written In a lighter, more graceful vein. And Long- 
fellow's reputation was so assured at Bowdoin, that 
after six years of service, he was called to a greater 
honour — no less than to succeed George Ticknor, 
in the chair of modern languages at Harvard — and 
again he went abroad to equip himself — this time 
in Germany, Scandinavia, Denmark, and Holland. 
A great sorrow came to him while in Rotterdam, 
and this was the death of his ** beauteous being." 

But he spent three years in very earnest prepara- 
tion, and so was enabled, in 1836, to assume his pro- 
fessorship at Cambridge. Modern languages, with 
the wealth of modern literature which they unlock, 
was a comparatively new subject to the students, who 
before had been content with ancient classics; and 
Longfellow was rapidly popular as a lecturer, be- 
cause he brought to them such rich treasures in art 
and song and tradition. He really created a new 
atmosphere of modern culture, and now he had time 
to write. 

In 1839, ** Hyperion" came out, so entitled be- 

22Z 




HENRY WAUSWORTH 
LONGFELLOW 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 




\ '\ 



\ :■ 

t > 

i ! 

[ \ 






OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



"^f"^'/' 



HENRY VVADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

cause It moved on high, among the clouds and stars. 
This Is the story of Paul Fleming, a young, poetic 
pilgrim, who buries himself in books in order to get 
in touch with German life, and at the same time, 
falls in love with Mary Ashburton. . It is couched 
in choicest language, holds bits of philosophy, his- 
tory, and Alpine scenery — and it Is so full of 
legends of castled Rhenish towers that It may serve 
as a guide-book. The final tribute Is made to Goe- 
the, who had just died. It is needless to add that 
Paul Fleming is Longfellow himself, and Mary Ash- 
burton, the Frances Appleton whom he met abroad 
and later married. 

With *' Hyperion," we dismiss Longfellow's prose 
works which were but three; the others being *' Outre- 
Mer," of which we have already spoken, and '' Kav- 
anagh," a story of New England life. 

But his poems gave him wider fame, and they 
are so various that it Is hard to know upon which to 
pause. In 1839, appeared his *' Voices of the 
Night " ; among them " The Reaper and the 
Flowers," '' The Footsteps of Angels," and '' The 
Psalm of Life." For the last, written on the back 
of an old invitation, he had been promised, on its 
first publication, five dollars; he never received a 
cent, but perhaps later on he realised what it did for 
the world ! 

'* The Voices " was followed by a collection called 
*^ Ballads and Other Poems." In this were two 

223 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ballads that in strength, simplicity, rapid movement, 
and picturesqueness, rivalled those of the mediaeval 
day. In the first, *' The Skeleton In Armour," the 
skeleton tells how he as *' a Viking bold " had won 
the daughter of a Norwegian king; and how, his suit 
being denied, he had borne away his prize " through 
the wild hurricane." '' The Wreck of the Hes- 
perus," picturing a disaster off the Gloucester coast, 
came to the poet at midnight, in stanzas ; and the two 
fully established his ability as a story-teller in verse. 
In the same collection, we trace upward the youthful 
yearnings of '' Excelsior." Here, too, is '' The Vil- 
lage Blacksmith " which he called his second *' Psalm 
of Life," and it took a very human pen to give such 
a subject poetic setting. 

In 1842, he made a short trip abroad for his 
health, visited Belgium, and climbing up into the bel- 
fry of Bruges, found a suggestion for a poem. The 
boisterous return voyage lasted fifteen days, and dur- 
ing sleepless nights, he meditated over seven anti- 
slavery poems, which in the mornings were written 
out. They were full of earnest feeling, but not pas- 
sionate like Whittier's. 

Shortly after, he married Miss Appleton, the sister 
of Motley's friend, and soon another volume of 
poems was announced, its opening one being '' The 
Belfry of Bruges." In this volume is the bit 
of optimism, *' The Arrow and the Song," which 
he wrote one morning before church, with the speed 

224 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

of an arrow. In this, too, we listen to " The Old 
Clock on the Stairs," which still holds its own at Elm 
Knoll, near Pittsfield; and here, in 19 12, it ticked out 
to Miss Alice Longfellow the same refrain : — 

" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 

that it gave to her father. In 1845, when on his wed- 
ding-tour, he and his bride paused in that mansion of 
^' Free-hearted Hospitality." 

Like his swallow-flights of song, his longer poems 
were greeted, and none more heartily than " Evan- 
geline " — the flower of American idyls. The story 
is founded on a tradition previously proposed to 
Hawthorne; and Longfellow liked it and begged 
him, if he had decided not to use it for a story, to 
give it to him for a legendary poem. Hawthorne 
willingly consented, and later highly praised Long- 
fellow's version. 

The story is of two Acadian lovers, who, in the 
War of 1755, were parted on their marriage morn; 
and we follow the saintly maiden, Evangeline, in her 
weary quest for her lost Gabriel. It tells of unrest, 
hope deferred, and a death-bed meeting; but it is 
woven in flowing hexameter lines and we catch pleas- 
ing glimpses of Acadia, the moonlight forest, pic- 
turesque trappers, the river bank and ocean shore; 
and we hear the exquisite song of the mocking-bird, 

225 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

wildest of singers. Indeed, Longfellow cast over 
the region such a halo of romance that it is known as 
*' Evangeline's Land " — and ** on the shores of the 
Basin of Minas " maidens still " by the evening fire 
repeat Evangeline's story." Years later, when 
Longfellow was graciously received by Queen Vic- 
toria, the servants stood in the hall to see him as he 
passed, because they had heard Prince Albert read 
*' Evangeline " to the royal children. 

It was not long after '^ Evangeline " made its ap- 
pearance before Longfellow announced yet '* another 
stone rolled off the hilltop." This was the collection 
called *' By the Seaside and by the Fireside "; and in 
this we read " The Building of the Ship," one of our 
finest national poems, closing with its magnificent 
apostrophe to the Union; and then, in 1854, he re- 
signed his Cambridge professorship to Lowell, for he 
wished to devote the rest of his life to society and 
his " ideal world of poetry." 

In about a year, we are introduced to the Indian 
epic, " Hiawatha." Longfellow had meditated 
much upon this aboriginal race ; Cooper had given it a 
romantic setting; Parkman, a historical one; and he 
desired to treat it poetically; and "Hiawatha," in 
ringing metre, is a unique addition to our native lit- 
erature. It forms a series of legends of the uncut 
forests, war, and hunting-scenes, figures strange and 
beautiful, and savage beasts that play their part. 

We may hear the whir of the partridge and most 

226 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

alluring of bird-notes. We watch the youthful Hia- 
watha as he learns of *' every bird its language"; 
we follow him on his quest to the wigwam where 

" Sat the ancient arrow-maker 
In the land of the Dakotas, 
Making arrow-heads of jasper." 

We find him wooing the lovely daughter, Minne- 
haha, and then they depart, leaving 

**. . . the old man standing lonely 
At the doorway of his wigwam," 

and hear the Falls of Minnehaha 

" Calling to them from the distance, 
Crying to them from afar ofif, 
* Fare thee well, O Minnehaha! ' " 

and we trace through dreadful famine and Minne- 
haha's death, the slender thread of the story, follow- 
ing the noble Hiawatha as he journeys onward to 

" The land of the Hereafter." 

And next Longfellow — the poet of the Indian — 
becomes in *' The Courtship of Miles Standish," the 
poet of the Puritan. Now we are in old Plymouth, 
with its graves on the hill, its meeting-house, Puritan 
homes, and busy spinning-wheels. Here are the bluff 

227 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Captain, a better fighter than lover, loyal John Alden, 
and the damsel Priscilla : — 

" Beautiful with her beauty, 
And rich with the wealth of her being." 

And one must read the poem to appreciate the quiz- 
zing, pivotal question : — 

"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" 

In "The Tales of a Wayside Inn," the scene is 
laid in a hostelry, at Sudbury, Massachusetts, — 

" Built in the old colonial day 
When men lived in a grander way 
With ampler hospitality/' 

Here, in imagination, there assembled, from time 
to time, about the blazing hearth, a coterie of merry 
guests, among them Ole Bull, Professor Tredwell, 
Luigi Monti, and the poet himself; and each told a 
story — ''well or ill" — after the manner of the 
"Decameron," or "Canterbury Tales"; and for 
these " Tales " Longfellow drew upon his knowledge 
of old legends. Here in one we may wake to " the 
midnight message of Paul Revere " — in another, 
the melodious chant in " King Robert of Sicily." 

Few poets dare attempt such lengthy poems as 
"Evangeline," "Hiawatha," "The Courtship of 
Miles Standish," and "The Tales of a Wayside 

228 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Inn " — but each fills an honoured niche in American 
literature; and Longfellow has also written many 
sonnets. 

We next open to some of his poems of place that 
came from his great ** Library of Poetry and Song," 
the treasure-house that he translated from the Old 
World to the New. As a romancer, he loved to 
wander far, and to return laden with word-pictures 
to gladden those at home. There are many 

" Old legends of the monkish pages, 
Traditions of the saint and sages, 
Tales that have the rime of ages, 
And chronicles of eld," 

and it is a confusion of riches, from which to select. 
We grow drowsy over the English '' Curfew " as 
it tolls forth : — 

" Cover the embers, 

And put out the light; 
Toil comes with the morning 

And rest with the night. 

. . . • • 

Song sinks into silence, 

The story is told, 
The windows are darkened, 

The hearth-stone is cold. 

Darker and darker 

The black shadows fall; 
Sleep and oblivion 

Reign over all." 
229 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
Again, in Bruges, we hear the bells : ^- 

" Low at times and loud at times, 
And changing like a poet's rhymes, 
Rang the beautiful wild chimes 
From the Belfry in the market 
Of the ancient town of Bruges." 

At Wartburg, he recalls the tale of Walter Von 
der Vogelweid, the Minnesinger, and his bequest to 
the birds. We may not tell *' Where repose the 
poet's bones," — 

" But around the vast cathedral, 
By sweet echoes multiplied, 
Still the birds repeat the legend, 
And the name of Vogelweid." 

At Nuremberg, — 

"Quaint old town of toil and traffic. 
Quaint old town of art and song," 

he '^ sang in thought his careless lay," and gathered 
from memories of Albrecht Diirer, *' the Evangelist 
of Art," and Hans Sach, the *' cobbler-bard,"— 

" The nobility of labour, — the long pedigree of toil." 

Longfellow says somewhere in speaking of his 
travel : — 

230 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

" In fancy I can hear again 
The Alpine torrent roar, 
The mule bells on the hills of Spain, 
The Sea at Elsinore. 

I see the convent's gleaming walls 

Rise from its grove of pine, 
And towers of old Cathedral tall, 

And castles by the Rhine.** 

So in his poems he voiced various aspirations, both 
native and foreign; but as we study into his life, we 
find his spirit more and more dominated by his 
" Christus." It was a theme upon which he pon- 
dered many years, for it was in 1841, that he wrote 
in his diary: ** This evening it has come into my 
mind to undertake a long and elaborate poem by 
the name of ' Christ,' " and thirty-two years later, 
in 1863, th^ poem was finished. It is a trilogy — 
embodying the apostolic, the mediaeval, and the Puri- 
tan conception of the Christ. The mediaeval, '' The 
Golden Legend,'' came out first, in 185 1. This 
enters very intimately into the temper of the monk 
in the age when the land was '' white with convent- 
walls " ; when 

" Men climb the consecrated stair 

With weary feet and bleeding hearts; 
And leave the world and its delights. 

Its passions, struggles and despair, 
For contemplation and for prayer 
In cloister cells of cenobites,*' 
231 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

This was followed, in 1868, by the *' New England 
Tragedies," in which from a study of old colonial 
authors, he illustrated his theme with the persecution 
of Quakers and witches. We remember how Leo- 
nardo da Vinci, in his " Last Supper," painted the 
head of Christ last — so Longfellow left his 
*' Christus " for his final conception, though it came 
first in order. " The Christus " was published in 
1863 ; and at the conclusion of all, he writes: — 

" My work is finished ; I am strong 
In faith and hope and charity; 
For I have written the things I see, 
The things that have been and shall be, 
Conscious of right, nor fearing wrong; 
Because I am in love with love . . •. 
. / . And love is life." 

iWas it after reading " The Christus " that one 
has beautifully named Longfellow ** The St, John 
of our American Apostles '' ? 

During all these years, Longfellow dwelt in the 
old '' Cragie House,'* with his wife, and his chil- 
dren: — 

" Grave Alice and laughing AUegra, 
And Edith with golden hair." 

The library kept by his daughter as in the olden day 
is lined with pictures and antique book-cases. Upon 
the standing-desk, in the window where he used to 
write, is his statuette of Goethe. Upon the round 

232 




CO 

D 
O 

w 

3 
< 
o 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

table, In the centre, are the inkstands of Coleridge 
and Tom Moore and his own quill-pen. 

There, too, is his deep armchair where he so often 
mused before he wrote; and another chair, made 
from the wood of '' The Spreading Chestnut Tree." 
This was presented to him on his seventy-second 
birthday by the Cambridge children. The library 
is rich in happy reminiscences. Here often came the 
poet's lifelong friends — among them Felton, Whit- 
tier, Lowell, Hawthorne, Agassiz, Holmes, and 
Bayard Taylor. 

Specially in later life, the " rosy-cheeked patri- 
arch " grew to be a familiar figure in Cambridge; 
and he tried to be kind to relic-hunters and even to 
autograph-seekers. One day an Englishman intro- 
duced himself with this remark: *' In other countries, 
you know, we go to see ruins and the like; but you 
have no ruins in your country, and L thought — I 
thought — I'd call and see you ! " Once he had a 
request, asking him to copy his poem, " Break, break, 
break," for the writer; again a stranger called to in- 
quire if Shakespeare lived in the neighbourhood, and 
he replied that he knew " no such person." 

But he enjoyed, also, a far pleasanter kind of pop- 
ularity, as when Professor Kneeland, returning from 
Iceland, bore back the following message: "Tell 
Longfellow that we love him, that Iceland knows 
him by heart ! " And a workman in the streets of 
London stopped him to ask " to shake hands with 

233 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the man who made the * Psalm of Life ' " ; and an 
Englishman once wrote of him as " The bard whose 
sweet songs have more than aught else bound two 
worlds together"; and George William Curtis tells 
us that Longfellow is so popular because he expresses 
his sentiment in such a simple, melodious man- 
ner. 

In July, 1861, Longfellow's wife was burned to 
death before the eyes of her family; and in his sud- 
den distress at the shock, he sought refuge in making 
a translation of *' Dante." He studied it line by line, 
and has preserved both form and spirit of the *' Di- 
vine Comedy." 

In 1868, once more he went to Europe, with his 
daughter; visited Tennyson in the Isle of Wight; 
received degrees from Oxford and Cambridge; and 
passed the winter in Rome. England lavished atten- 
tion upon our poet, and his bust stands to-day in 
Westminster Abbey. 

His lines, written in the after-glow of his life, in- 
creased in depth and fullness, and this is evinced in 
his " Morituri Salutamus," which he read on the 
fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from Bowdoin 
College, before the remaining members of his class, 
and Professor Packard, the one surviving instructor. 
It opens as follows : — 

" * O Caesar, we who are about to die 
Salute you ! ^ was the gladiator's cry 

234 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

In the arena, standing face to face 

With death and with the Roman populace," 

and on March twenty-fourth, 1882, the bells of 
Cambridge tolled out, in seventy-five strokes, the 
death-knell of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

At his public funeral service, his brother, Rev. 
Samuel Longfellow, read the accompanying lines 
from ** Hiawatha " : — 

" He is dead, the sweet musician ! 
He the sweetest of all singers! 
He has gone from us forever, 
He has moved a little nearer 
To the Master of all music, 
To the Master of all singing! '' 

and his remains were laid in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, 
and there went up a cry of personal loss both at home 
and abroad; above all, from the children, who were 
so dear to him. They claimed him as their own — 
for they loved his wonderful songs and marvellous 
tales. They could understand his meaning. Schools 
all over the land reverently draped their halls in 
memory, and some yet observe Longfellow's birth- 
day, February twenty-seventh. 

And the common people mourned; for to them he 
had taught optimism and aspiration. This we may 
realise as we bring to mind some of his helpful 
tenets : — 

235 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" But to act that each to-morrow 
Finds us farther than to-day." 



Know how sublime a thing it is, 
To suffer and be strong." 



" Lives of great men all remind us, 
iWe can make our lives sublime, 
And departing, leave behind us. 
Footprints on the sands of time." 



" The heights by great men reached and kept, 
Were not attained by sudden flight ; 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night." 

Longfellow had his critics — and who has not? 
Poe thought his poems didactic rather than beautiful; 
others, that they were too diffuse or imitative, and 
using too much freedom with dates and facts of his- 
tory. But his was truly, as Stedman says, *' The 
gospel of good-will set to music." He had a song 
to sing to humanity, and he sang it ! 

His fellow-authors grieved for him and talked 
about him to one another. Lowell writes : — 

" His nature was consecrated ground, into which no un- 
clean spirit could ever enter " ; 

and Professor Norton : — - 

" The sweetness, the gentleness, the grace, the purity, the 
humanity of his verse were as the image of his own soul." 

And Stedman says further : — 

236 



HENRY WADSWORTH .LONGFELLOW; 

"I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious 
keys, playing and singing in the twilight within sound of 
the note of the sea. There he lingers late, the curfew-bell 
has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that 
tender voice is silent, and he softly moves into his rest," 

And Richardson adds one final word : — 

" His song shall last until another shall sing the same 
song better." 

SONNET ON CHAUCER 

"An old man in a lodge within a park; 

The chamber walls depicted all around 
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound. 

And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark. 
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark 

Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; 
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, 

Then writeth in a book like any clerk, 
He is the Poet of the Dawn, who wrote 

The Canterbury Tales, and his old age 

Made beautiful with song; and as I read 
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note 

Of lark and linnet, and from every page 

Rise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead." 

— Longfellozu, 

THE ARROW AND THE SONG 

" I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

237 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

I breathed a song into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For who has sight so keen and strong, 
That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterward, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend." 

— Longfellow. 

SERENADE — FROM " THE SPANISH 
STUDENT " 

" Stars of the summer night ! 
Far in yon azure deeps. 
Hide, hide your golden light! 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps! 
Sleeps ! 

Moon of the summer night! 

Far down yon western steeps, 
Sink, sink in silver light! 

She sleeps! 
My lady sleeps! 

Sleeps! 

Dream of the summer night! 

Where yonder woodbine creeps, 
Fold, fold thy pinions light! 

She sleeps! 
My lady sleeps! 

Sleeps! 

238 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Wind of the summer night! 

Tell her, her lover keeps 
Watch ! while in slumbers light 

She sleeps! 
My lady sleeps! 

Sleeps!" 

— Longfellow. 



239 



XXV 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

There stands to-day, in Cambridge, an ancestral 
colonial mansion called " Elmwood," because the 
roadway to its entrance was originally arched by 
noble elms. Here, on February twenty-second, 
1 8 19, James Russell Lowell was born; here he al- 
ways lived; and here he died on August twelfth, 
1 89 1. He belonged to a distinguished family. An 
uncle introduced cotton-spinning into a neighbouring 
town, and the busy, populous city is christened 
Lowell, in his honour. Another relative made a 
will at the Temple of Luxor, in Egypt, in which he 
left an educational endowment, that brought into be- 
ing Lowell Institute in Boston ; and James Russell — 
poet, critic, professor, lecturer, editor, essayist, dip- 
lomat and speaker on occasion — bravely upheld the 
family name. He was the son of a '* learned, saintly, 
and discreet Unitarian minister of Boston." His 
versatile, poetic mother of Scotch descent, early 
taught her children to love the ballads of the '' North 
Countrie," and to her, *' the patron of his youthful 
muse," he dedicated his first effusion. 

The lad, after the fashion of the day, attended a 
dame's school, and he later reminisced over it as fol- 
lows : — 

240 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

** Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now I see 
The humble school-house of my A, B, C, 
Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire. 
Waited in ranks the wicked command to fire; 
Then all together, when the signal came, 
Discharged their a-b abs against the dame." 

James was a quiet lad, devoted to reading, and in 
due time, following the family tradition, he entered 
Harvard. Here he read everything he liked, in- 
stead of ordained text-books; and for this he was 
rusticated to Concord, where he studied under Dr. 
Ripley, and he enjoyed meeting there a galaxy of 
authors much better than the definite work arranged 
for him in college. His fellow-students, at Cam- 
bridge, who had read his verses, thought him inspired 
with divine fire, and they flattered him by appointing 
him class-poet; and his father, hearing this, sadly 
exclaimed: *' Oh, dear, James promised me that he 
would quit writing poetry and go to work! " One 
poem was a satire on Transcendentalism, to which, 
after his marriage, he became a devotee. 

In 1838, upon receiving his degree, he made a 
nominal study of law, but it proved distasteful, so 
he turned his life-thought to literature. But for 
some years how to earn a living was a problem. He 
published a slender volume of his verses, and called 
it '' A Year's Work." These he later denounced as 

" The firstlings of my muse, 
Poor windfalls of unripe experience." 
241 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Then with Poe and Hawthorne, he attempted to 
establish a magazine, but only three numbers were 
issued, and he also gave a lecture in Concord for 
which he received five dollars. Besides, in 1844, he 
married a wife. This was a Miss White, a woman 
of great loveliness, but of decided views, both tran- 
scendental and anti-slavery. She lived only nine 
years, but this was quite long enough to convert her 
young husband from a cold, imitative, literary style, 
to such a heart-love for brotherhood and patriotism 
that in his new vision of " The Present Crisis," he 
exclaimed : — 

" Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne; 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim un- 
known, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 
His own/* 

And now life and fuller work and real success, 
broadened out before Lowell. His second volume 
contained some of his most charming fancies. 
Among them '* Rhoecus," the Greek legend of the 
wood-nymph and the bee; and " A Legend of Brit- 
tany," considered by Poe the best American poem. 
It is made in flowery lines, but the tale, somehow, 
lacks distinctness. 

Lowell called " 1848 " his *' annus mirabilis," and 
it was indeed the wonderful year of his life, for in it 
appeared all three of his masterpieces: ** The Vision 

242 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

of Sir Launfal," '' The Fable for Critics," and the 
first series of ** The Biglow Papers." 

Sir Launfal's vision embodies the search for the 
Holy Grail, that legend so dear to romancers. It 
was a sudden inspiration, for it was completed in 
forty-eight hours, during which he hardly ate or 
slept; and the portrayal of the noble lesson of sym- 
pathy and suffering was most sincere and reverent. 
It would be difficult to decide which passage is most 
popular — the one beginning : — 

" And what is so rare as a day in June? 
Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays: 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten:" 

or that other, conveying its tender lesson : — 

" Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbour, and Me." 

Lowell turns most easily from spiritual sentiment 
to frolicsome mood, as we discover on opening his 
*' Fable for Critics." This audacious, playful sur- 
vey of contemporary authors was first made for 
his own amusement, and then he allowed it to appear 

243 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

anonymously, and, as one has said, he ** flecked him- 
self with his own whip " as follows : — 

** There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching." 

The poem, composed by one of the youngest of the 
guild of letters, is at once a masterpiece of humour, 
satire, and prophecy. 

*' The Biglow Papers," which Whittier said 
*' could only be written in Yankee New England, by 
a New England Yankee," were in two series. In 
both, Hosea Biglow, a shrewd-witted, down-East 
Yankee, attempts in the broadest dialect to rouse his 
fellow-citizens to military fervour. Birdofredum 
Sawin, and the preacher, Homer Wilbur, insert their 
original ideas. 

In the first series, these views relate to the Mexican 
War, in connection with our claim on Texas. They 
are a satire on Daniel Webster and his party, for 
yielding to the demands of the South. The opening 
paper contains the lines : — 

" Massachusetts, God forgive her, 
She's a-kneelin' with the rest, 
She, thet ough' to ha' clung forever 
In her grand old eagle-nest." 
244 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

These sentiments did not stop the war; but they 
voiced the feeling of the people and well illustrate 
the wisdom, beauty and humour, which Lowell de- 
lighted to express in dialect form. And among the 
episodes introduced to relieve the tension, are some 
lyric strains ; as, for example, when Hawthorne asked 
Lowell to try his hand at Yankee love-making, and 
Lowell, in response, wrote '* The Courtin'," which 
is introduced between the first and second series of 
** The Biglow Papers.'' The delicious bit of 
*' courtin' " took place on a *' night all white and 
still,'' when 

" Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An* peeked in thru the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'Ith no one nigh to hender." 

The second part of the *' Papers " was not printed 
in book form until twenty years after the first; and 
in this, Hosea Biglow's humour is more grim than 
before, as he aims his satiric weapons against both 
slavery and the Civil War. Among other things, 
he insists that the quarrel is a family one and criti- 
cises England for daring to interfere with what a 
free, high-minded people hold sacred. The most 
caustic satire is Brother Jonathan's protest to John 
Bull, in which he asserts : — 

" It don't seem hardly right, John, 
When both my hands was full, 

245 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

To stump me to a fight, John — 

Your cousin, too, John Bull! 
• ••••• 

We know weVe got a cause, John, 

Thet's honest, just, an' true; 
We thought 'twould win applause, John, 

Ef nowhere else, from you." 

Hosea Biglow is as unique in literature as Leather 
Stocking, and his words, In their swinging rhyme, are 
a splendid thrust at scorn for cowardice, and show 
deep insight into truth. They are full of proverbial 
hits, and, more than anything else in our literature, 
immortalise the Yankee character and dialect. 
They naturally caused great excitement both North 
and South. Lowell once said: " I am sorry that I 
began by making Hosea such a detestable speller.'' 
We are sorry, too, for if it were only easier to under- 
stand the dialect, we might better realise what a bril- 
liant addition '' The Biglow Papers " made to the 
serio-comic literature of the world. 

In 1857, Lowell took his family abroad, and his 
little son, Walter, died In Rome. On the home 
voyage, they met Thackeray, and with the English 
master, Lowell formed one of the pleasant friend- 
ships of his life, for they had much in common. 

But after his return, another sorrow came to him ; 
his inspiring wife died, leaving him with one little 
daughter, and It was well for him that new duties 
soon claimed his Interest; for on Longfellow's reslg- 

246 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

nation in 1855, Lowell was called upon to succeed 
him in the chair of modern languages and polite 
literature at Cambridge, and he was given two pre- 
paratory years abroad. 

In 1857, he married again, and also entered upon 
his professional career, and no man was ever better 
fitted to lecture on the whole range of literature ; 
usually stimulating, sometimes indolent, he was most 
popular with the students. His lectures on Chaucer, 
Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, and others, 
were the result of profound investigation — and on 
" Dante " he spent twenty years, before he gave it 
to his class. It is pleasant to think of both Long- 
fellow and Lowell, who lived near together, holding 
" sweet converse," and linked for so many years with 
Harvard, for Lowell retained his professorship until 

1877. 

Ever since his failure in early life, Lowell had 

meditated on again trying a serial venture; and in 
1857, he started ''The Atlantic Monthly," in which 
he decidedly advanced the standard of magazine 
writing. In this, his second series of " Biglow 
Papers " came out, one by one; also, in 1865, his stir- 
ring *' Harvard Commemoration Ode," written in 
honour of those who fell in the battles of the Civil 
War, and read at the festival to welcome the sur- 
viving students and graduates on their return. 

Lowell remained as the head of " The Atlantic " 
for four years, and in 1863, joined Charles Eliot 

247 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Norton as an editor of " The North American Re- 
view." To both of these magazines, he contributed 
not only poems but essays on many subjects, which 
revealed him as a man of the very broadest culture, 
with remarkable gift of expression. Such were hh 
" Fireside Travels," '* Among my Books," and 
*' From my Study Windows." 

His lectures and essays grew out of each other; 
some were arranged for political questions, while 
others were suggested by his English dramatists. 
These essays, very varied in kind, make up the body 
of his prose writings. Sometimes they show want of 
perspective, and lack in continuity and sustained 
thought; but many of them are most attractive, and 
interest even those not usually fond of reading. 
They are full of suggestions to seek further. They 
enliven the fancy, too, as in the following quotation 
from/' At Sea ": — 

" I sometimes sit and pity Noah, but even he had this 
advantage over all succeeding navigators, that, whenever 
he landed, he was sure to get no ill news from home. He 
should be canonized as the patron saint of newspaper cor- 
respondents, being the only man who ever had the very last 
authentic news from everywhere!" 

Lowell's '' Essays " furnish a far stronger intellect- 
ual stimulus than the gossipy articles to catch the 
fancy which are offered us to-day by the. alert, modern 
journalist 

248 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

In poetry, his patriotic verses stand first, for with 
Whittier, he stood shoulder to shoulder in a fight for 
American ideals. With the '' Harvard Commem- 
oration Ode,'' three others are ranked; one delivered 
in 1873, on the centenary of the year in which Wash- 
ington took command of the forces under the now 
historic Cambridge *' elm "; another, in 1875, on the 
centenary of the fight at Concord Bridge; and in 
1876, a centennial "Fourth of July" ode. These 
are *' the cap-sheaves " of the author's achievement. 

And if patriotism was a " ruling passion," Nature 
was surely another — Nature that always roused him 
with child-like joy; a charmed feeling animates his 
lyrics on the trees and birds and flowers of Elmwood 
— the delicate crispness and alert grace of his birch- 
trees, " the go-betweens of rustic lovers." The bob- 
olink he immortalises as Shelley does the skylark; 
watch and listen, as 

" Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 

Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings, 
Or given way to 't in a mock despair, 

Runs down, a brook o' laughter thru the air.'' 

Dearest of all is the dandelion — the 

" Common flower that grows beside the way 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold '* — 

^nd in very ecstasy he exclaims : — 

^49 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; 

The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 
Who from the dark old tree 

Beside the door sang clearly all day long, 
And I serene in childish piety, 

Listened as if I heard an angel song 

With news from Heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my contented ears, 

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." 

His poems are perfectly finished and among them 
are many gems. Perhaps the best collection was 
** Heartsease and Rue/' published in 1888, opening 
with the memorial to Agassiz — one of the world's 
noted elegies. 

In 1877, Lowell was appointed Minister to Spain 
as a fitting tribute to his brilliant social and Intellect- 
ual qualities; and later, he was transferred to Eng- 
land. He was, as we have already seen, an intense 
American; and in an address at Birmingham, on 
"Democracy," he did not hesitate to enforce his 
principles as strongly as years earlier, in the protest 
of Brother Jonathan to John Bull. 

But he was, also, a man of unusual tact and dignity; 
a speaker of rare felicity — he was constantly called 
upon for public addresses and after-dinner talks. 
The Queen deeply honoured him, and the people 
always welcomed him as *' His Excellency, the Am- 
bassador of American Literature, to the Court of 
Shakespeare." And how proud America was of her 
*' Representative Man of Letters "I 

250 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

And when he had grandly completed his mission, 
he returned to Elmwood, to its 

" Sequestered nooks, 
And all the sweet serenity of books." 

He met his *' garden acquaintances," received the 
catbirds' welcome, and with his familiars, the blue- 
birds, shared among the elms and willows his books 
and his pipe. He was, in a way, a recluse, but he 
never failed to make time for his *' friendships built 
firm 'gainst flood and wind"; and he held close 
intercourse with Wendell Phillips and Garrison 
and Agassiz and Whittier and Longfellow and 
Motley and Parkman and his special familiar 
Holmes. 

His library is preserved as he left it, with family 
portraits and chair and desk and even his clay-pipe, 
and the crowded cases filled with well-thumbed vol- 
umes. High beneath the roof of Elmwood was his 
study, where he slept as a boy, and where he also did 
much writing; and in this room one window looks 
right over on to Mt. Auburn, not far distant. His 
second wife had died in England, and here at Elm- 
wood, or at his daughter's home, in Southboro, he 
passed his last years, in poetic seclusion, still writing, 
sometimes lecturing. 

He died at Elmwood, in 1891. Among his pall- 
bearers were his cherished friends. Holmes, Howells, 
Curtis, and President Eliot, and he was buried in Mt. 

251 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Auburn, not far from Longfellow, and almost in 
sight of his study-window. He was mourned every- 
where in America, and memorial services were held 
in Westminster Abbey, which gave token of the 
abiding impress he had made on the heart of Eng- 
land, 

While Lowell had irrepressible humour, he does 
not appeal to so many young people as Longfellow. 
He is, perhaps, too profound; and he has a curious 
habit of shifting from the serious to the burlesque, 
and back again to the serious, that often puzzles the 
reader; and he did possess some impulsive oddities 
of temper. He was, however, as one has said: 
*' The best of company in the best of company." He 
believed in his own opinions, and loved to talk while 
his admiring friends would sit about him and listen 
— and his letters to these friends are indeed delight- 
ful. 

Surely we have found him a versatile man — this 
" poet, critic, professor, lecturer, editor, essayist, 
diplomat, and speaker on occasion "; and this versa- 
tility may be well exemplified by adding some of his 
proverbial sayings, which, like those of Emerson, are 
fresh and vigorous to-day : — 

" He's been true to one party, an' thet is himself." 

" New times demand new measures and new men." 

" A ginooine statesman must be on his guard 

Ef he must hev beliefs not to b'leeve them tu hard," 

252 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

" In general those who have nothing to say contrive to 
spend the longest time in doing it/' 

" Nothing takes longer in saying than anything else." 

** Be a man among men, not a humbug among humbugs." 

** They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right with two or three." 

" Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime, — 
Not failure, but low aim, is crime," 

ALADDIN 

When I was a beggarly boy, 

And lived in a cellar damp, 
I had not a friend nor a toy, 

But I had Aladdin's lamp; 
When I could not sleep for cold, 

I had fire enough in my brain, 
And builded with roofs of gold 

My beautiful castles in Spain! 

Since then I have toiled day and night, 

I have money and power good store, 
But rd give all my lamps of silver bright 

For the one that is mine no more; 
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, 

You gave, and may snatch again; 
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, 

For I own no more castles in Spain ! 

— Lowell. 



253 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 

" The snow had begun in the gloaming, 
And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 
With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 

Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 

Was ridged inch-deep with pearl, 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 

Came Chanticleer's muffled crow. 
The stifE rails were softened to swan*s-down, 

And still fluttered down the snow. 

I stood and watched by the window 

The noiseless work of the sky, 
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 

Like brown leaves whirling by. 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 

Where a little headstone stood; 
How the flakes were folding it gently. 

As did robins the babes in the wood. 

Up spoke our own little Mabel, 

Saying, * Father, who makes it snow ? ' 

And I told of the good All-father 
Who cares for us here below. 

Again I looked at the snow-fall. 

And thought of the leaden sky 
That arched o'er our first great sorrow. 

When that mound was heaped so high. 
254 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 

I remembered the gradual patience 
That fell from that cloud like snow, 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar of our deep-plunged woe. 

And again to the child I whispered, 

' The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 

Alone can make it fall ! ' 

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow." 

— Lowell. 



255 



XXVI 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) 

Emerson, the seer — Whittier, the patriotic bard 

— Hawthorne, the romancer — Lowell, the critic — 
and Longfellow, laureate of the human heart — - were 
leaders of the most gifted group of men of letters 
that has appeared in this country. About the middle 
of the nineteenth century, they immortalised Concord, 
made Boston, for a second time, '' The Literary 
Hub," and did very much towards creating a litera- 
ture that educated the people to a taste for the best. 
They were men of great variety of attainment — and 
how the libraries of the land expanded as they wrote ! 
Just one more member and the group is complete. 
He must be a humourist to make the rest laugh 

— and an optimist, to teach them to pay proper 
tribute, one to the other — and Oliver Wendell 
Holmes steps forth as the survivor of the grand old 
coterie. 

He was born on August twenty-ninth, 1809, in a 
great gambrel-roofed house In Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts — a house haunted by four or five genera- 
tions of gentlemen and gentlewomen. Among his 
ancestors was Anne Bradstreet, *' The Tenth Muse "; 
and as he had very strong views about the necessity 

256 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

of selecting good forbears, it is well that his own were 
so honourable. 

His was a scholarly home, and the boys " bumped 
about the bookshelves in the library '' ; and long years 
after, Oliver told the world that he liked books be- 
cause he was '* born among them." The father, who 
wrote ** The Annals of America," was, for forty 
years, settled over a Congregational church in Cam- 
bridge, and finally deposed for refusing to accept 
Unitarian tenets; and the old house, too, was de- 
posed, for just a stone-slab marks to-day the site 
where ** Oliver Wendell Holmes was born." 

He prepared, at Phillips Academy, Andover, for 
entrance to Harvard College, and carried with him 
a fondness for rhyming. He graduated in the 
/' Class of '29," in which every member turned out 
famous for something. In it were the noted author 
and Unitarian clergyman, James Freeman Clarke; 
and Samuel J. Smith, who, as the writer of " Amer- 
ica," would be known — so Holmes believed — long 
after other poets of the day were in oblivion. But 
what gave the class wider notoriety, were the forty or 
more anniversary poems, which Holmes, as laureate, 
dedicated to It. 

The year after graduating, he was one day shocked 
to read that It was proposed to break up the frigate 
Constitution, which was universally known as *' Old 
Ironsides," because In the War of 18 12 It had 
won such a splendid victory over the British Guer- 

257 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Here — and, like the Maine of later history, it 
was an object of national pride. With hot indigna- 
tion, Holmes quickly wrote his '* Old Ironsides,'' be- 
ginning : — 

" Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky; 
Beneath it rang the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar; — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more." 

He hurried with his manuscript to the office of '* The 
Boston Advertiser," and it was at once accepted and 
copied all over the land ; and it so roused public feel- 
ing that the frigate was saved, and Holmes's im- 
promptu outburst became a standard lyric. 

Holmes first took up law but very soon renounced 
it for medicine. This he studied in Boston; then for 
two and a half years most enthusiastically in Europe ; 
and in 1836 — a well-equipped young doctor — he 
took his degree of M.D. He hung out his shingle 
in somewhat frolicsome mood, wishing he dared print 
on it: *' Small fevers gratefully received"; and this 
same merry humour and his skill in rhyming somehow 
told, at the outset, against his reputation as a physi- 
cian, and yet this cheeriness made him always a 
welcome guest in the sick-room. 

258 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

His first volume contains "The Last Leaf" — 
which popular poem, perhaps more than any other, 
manifests his rare mingling of mirth and pathos. It 
was suggested by meeting in the street a venerable 
relic of Revolutionary days — with cocked hat, knee- 
breeches, buckled shoes, and sturdy cane. Poe loved 
the poem and sent its author a copy in his own writ- 
ing; Abraham Lincoln often repeated it; and Holmes 
read it on occasion, with a meaning which only 
he could impart. Written in his youth, the words 
seem prophetic when we think of him as the last sur- 
vivor of the grand New England group. 

In 1839, Holmes became professor of anatomy 
and physiology in Dartmouth College ; and as teacher 
and lecturer, he proved much more successful than as 
practising physician. Certain lessons that he had 
learned from experience, he earnestly taught to his 
pupils. He begged them, if they wanted success in 
any one calling, never to let the world know that they 
were interested in any other; in other words, not to 
attempt at the same time to make rhymes and pre- 
scriptions. 

The Miss Jackson whom he now married was the 
daughter of an Associate-Justice of Massachusetts 
and she proved an ideal wife. After his marriage, 
he resigned his professorship and resumed practice in 
Boston. Then, in 1847, he was appointed professor 
of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, holding 
this chair for thirty-five years. As an instructor, he 

259 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was remarkably successful, and given to experiments 
of all kinds. His pupils asserted that he knew as 
much of the body as the mind, and, by apt and comic 
illustration, he made the driest matter interesting. 
He did much scientific writing in connection with his 
lectures; indeed, most of the prose literary work be- 
longing to these earlier years was on medical topics. 

Like Emerson and Lowell, he needed more money 
than his profession yielded; so he, too, travelled about 
as a Lyceum lecturer — his ''lecture-peddling," he 
dubbed it. Perhaps the best of these lectures were en 
the English poets — and he frequently appended an 
original poem. He had not Emerson's personality 
and beautiful tones — his voice being not strong but 
clear and sympathetic. One has described the " plain 
little dapper man " — his short hair brushed down like 
a boy's — his countenance glowing with fervour — 
while with kindly and abundant wit, he moved his 
audience, looking up at the end of each sentence to 
be sure they caught the point! Who could miss it? 

Yet not as a lecturer, but as the author of '' The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " — regarded in its 
day one of the wisest and wittiest of prose books — 
will Dr. Holmes be longest known. The suggestion 
of his subject came to him in '' his uncombed literary 
boyhood," when he wrote two papers and sent them 
to a magazine ; and now twenty years later, he chris- 
tens *' The Atlantic Monthly," and promises Lowell 
to write for it, because only on that condition will it 

260 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

be brought into existence. And after this casual 
break of twenty years, he commences his first essay 
in these words: ** I was going to say when I was in- 
terrupted " — Thus his *' Autocrat '' begins. 

It is, in form, very like the English '' Spectator." 
Here an autocrat presides over a group of characters 
that gather, morning after morning, about a board- 
ing-house table. His conversation — chiefly in 
monologue — on a diversity of practical subjects — 
is addressed to those about him; among them, are the 
landlady, an old gentleman, an ancient maiden, a 
divinity student, and a sweet schoolmistress who sel- 
dom presumes to make a remark — all of whom are 
evidently created to give a turn to his theme, from 
time to time. Occasionally an illustrative, rambling 
rhyme or poem is introduced. 

Among these is *' The Chambered Nautilus " — 
that most graceful and artistic of Holmes's creations. 
The thought originated while examining a section of 
the spiral home of this ingenious builder. He noted 
the enlarging compartments, in which, as it grew, it 
dwelt in turn, and thus he wrote this piece of sym- 
bolism : — 

** Year after year behold the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil ; 
Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the next, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
Built up its idle door, 
;^6i 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 



Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" 

And Dr. Holmes was grateful for the heavenly mes- 
sage from the little silent architect, and more than by 
bronze or by marble, he wished to be remembered by 
his " Chambered Nautilus." 

And other poems, also, were woven into the chap- 
ters of " The Autocrat " — among them, '' Parson 
TurelPs Legacy " ; and the essays grew until at last 
there was a bookful, and in the final paragraph — to 
maintain a slender thread of sentiment that moves 
throughout — the Autocrat carries off the schoolmis- 
tress, that together they may walk ** the long path- 
way of peace." 

Years later, ** The Professor at the Breakfast 
Table " followed, and after another lapse, '' The 
Poet at the Breakfast Table"; and when Dr. 
Holmes was eighty-one, he brought out '' Over the 
Teacups " ; but these monologues belonging to the 
evening could not be so exhilarating as those of the 
bright, early morning. 

262 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Dr. Holmes calls genius *' the ability to light one's 
own fire "; and this he surely did in his " Autocrat " 
which at once was famous, and helped to give '' The 
Atlantic " a brave start. He was always watching 
the symptoms of the times; and in these and other 
essays for current literature, he discussed topics of 
every-day, and often from a physician's standpoint. 

The astonishing success of " The Autocrat " en- 
couraged him to write three novels: '' Elsie Venner," 
'' The Guardian Angel," and '' The Mortal Antip- 
athy " — all designed to show differing psychologi- 
cal theories. Elsie Venner may fascinate some with 
her serpent charm, and the sunshiny old bachelor in 
*'The Guardian Angel" is pleasing to meet; but 
Dr. Holmes does not tell a tale readily and his novels 
do not evince his highest talent — but he was most 
particular about the finish of these as of his other 
works. 

His biographies of Motley and Emerson are full 
of sympathetic appreciation. Motley was always 
his close friend, and he wrote out of the very fulness 
of his love. He admired Emerson, and in speaking 
of him, narrated many characteristic anecdotes; but 
he could not quite unravel the philosophy of the mam- 
moth thinker, as he shows in the following question: 

" Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, 
Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong? 
He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise, 
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies." 

263 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In Morse's " Life and Letters of Dr. Holmes/' 
we may read many of his vivacious letters to Motley, 
Lowell, Whittier, Agassiz, and others ; — and more, 
in Mrs. Field's ** Reminiscences." He was, in a 
sense, his own Boswell, talking frankly of his person- 
alities to his friends and the world. He sometimes 
even confesses his petty vanities, for he loved praise 
and advocated it, and he speaks of himself as — 

" Singing or sad by fits and starts, 
One actor in a dozen parts.'* 

And we love him the better for the human touches; 
but still we wish that he might have been attended by 
yet another Boswell, who would have preserved to 
posterity more of his sparkling conversations. 

And we get, too, a many-sided view of this hu- 
mourist, scientist, teacher, autocrat, essayist, biog- 
rapher, and letter-writer — when we glance into his 
three volumes of poetical works which might all have 
been called " Songs in Many Keys " — for they treat 
of things so varied. 

In *' War Time," he was conservative but patri- 
otic, as in " God Save the Flag! " and the " Army 
Hymn," of which we select the fourth stanza : — 



it 



God of all Nations ! Sovereign Lord ! 

In thy dread name we draw the sword, 
We lift the starry flag on high 

That fills with light our stormy sky.*' 
264 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

To instance his clever pen, we name the universal 
favourite — '' The Deacon's Masterpiece " — that 
** wonderful one-hoss shay," that, after running a 
hundred years, went to pieces all at once : — 

** All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst." 

And as '' the poet of occasion," Holmes is without 
a peer. Mrs. Field calls him : '* King of the Dinner- 
Table"; Mr. Stedman: ''Our most typical Univer- 
sity Poet"; another, ''The Harvard Mirth- 
Maker "; and yet one more: " Sweet Minstrel of the 
Joyous Present." Boston, his " Three-Hilled City," 
was always inviting him to celebrate something, and 
he was quickly ready for feast or commemoration. 

" Fm a florist in verse, and what would people say, 
If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? '* 

once exclaimed this unrivalled songster. Such 
poetic effusions do not always live — but they re- 
ceive enough instant applause as compensation. 

And this master of the gentle craft had many gifted 
friends. He was a lover of men — for as one has 
said: "He always made you think you were the 
best fellow in the world, and he the next best." 

He was a brilliant member of the " Saturday 
Club," that for years brought together in Boston the 
brightest scholars of the land, and often at its 

265 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

monthly dinners entertained distinguished guests 
from abroad. Here one found Emerson, Longfel- 
low, Lowell, Hawthorne and Whittier; and often 
Dr. Holmes, the prince of conversationalists, presided 
with courtesy and unexampled witticism, and he was 
one of those, who, when he was in the room, the 
whole room was conscious of his presence — *' Our 
Yankee Tsar " — as Aldrich styled him. 

Dr. Holmes had warm admiration for Professor 
Agassiz and nicknamed him ** Liebig's Extract of the 
Wisdom of Ages.'' Of James Freeman Clarke he 
writes : — 

" With sacred zeal to save, to lead, — 
Long live our dear St. James." 

In greeting his faithful friend Lowell, on his re- 
turn from abroad, he wonders : — 

" By what enchantments, what alluring arts, 
Our truthful James led captive British hearts." 

Whittier calls Holmes '* our rarest optimist " — 
and on his eightieth birthday, inscribes to him a son- 
net containing the two graceful lines : — 

** Long be it ere the table shall be set 
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat." — 

and Holmes, not to be outdone by Whittier, wrote 
of the latter: — 

266 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

" Let him live to a hundred ; we want him on earth, 

• • •• • • • • • 

He never will die if he lingers below 

Till weVe paid him in love half the balance we owe ! " 

So the members of this New England group be- 
lieved firmly in one another, paid loving tribute tO' 
one another, and held together till death. Very 
touching are the memorial lines from Holmes to 
Lowell : — 

'' TAow shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir'' — 

In reference to the warm friendships embodied in 
his poems, we quote this story from Mrs. Field's 
** Reminiscences " : — 

" One evening the Doctor came in after the Phi Beta 
Kappa dinner at Cambridge, and said : * I can't stop — 
I just came to read you some verses I gave at the dinner to- 
day. I wouldn't have brought them, but Hoar says they are 
the best I have ever done.' Then in the fading sunset light 
reflected from the river, he read with great tenderness — 
' Bill and Joe.' " 

Mrs. Field adds: *' These are pleasant on the 
printed page, but divested of the affection with which 
he read them." Later in life. Dr. Holmes said in 
reference to similar poems: "The writing of such 
verses has been a passionate joy." 

And now to return to the facts of Dr. Holmes's 

267 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

life. In the Civil War, his son, Captain Holmes, 
was wounded at the battle at Ball's Bluff, and after 
seeking him, he wrote : " My Hunt after the Cap- 
tain." The son lived ** to fight another day " at 
Bull Run, and also to become the honoured Chief- 
Justice of Massachusetts. 

On Dr. Holmes's seventieth birthday, the publish- 
ers of " The Atlantic Monthly " tendered him a 
great public breakfast to which were summoned many 
representative men. For this he wrote, " The Iron 
Gate," a cheerful picture of old age. Truly, as Bur- 
roughs said of him: '' May is in his heart, and early 
autumn in his brain." 

On resigning his professorship at Harvard, in 
1882, the students presented him with a loving-cup 
inscribed with his own lines : — 

" Love Bless Thee , Joy Crown Thee, God Speed Thy 
Career.'' 

Dr. Holmes had always disliked change of any 
kind, and except for his lectures, he had travelled 
very little, for *' Better a hash at home than k roast 
with strangers," had been his motto. So his friends 
were surprised when, in 1886, fifty years after his 
first trip. Dr. Holmes took his daughter and went 
abroad. As *' The Autocrat," he was lionised 
everywhere, and his biographer says that it was only 
by extreme care that he extricated himself alive from 
the hospitalities of his British friends. Edinburgh, 

268 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Cambridge, and Oxford conferred degrees upon him; 
and as he appeared on the platform at Oxford, the 
students shrieked: ** Did he come in the One-Hoss 
Shay?" Upon his return to America he wrote, 
'' One Hundred Days in Europe*" 

The Autocrat spent his summers at Beverly Farms; 
and here, on his vine-covered verandah, overlooking 
the ocean, he passed '' many days of glowing hours." 
His winter home was in Boston, which was to him the 
veritable *' Hub of the Universe " — while to his ad- 
mirers, his library was " the hub " of Boston. His 
latest residence was on Beacon Street, near the homes 
of Mr. Howells and other old-time friends. How 
many to-day recall his cordial welcome as they visited 
him in his luxurious library, with the changing view 
upon Back Bay. Upon the wall hung a treasured 
Copley, the portrait of his ancestor, '* Dorothy Q." 
In his dainty poem addressed to her, he acquaints us 
with her thus : — 

"Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess, 

Thirteen summers, or something less; 

Girlish bust, but womanly air; 

Smooth, square forehead with uproUed hair; 

Lips that lover has never kissed ; 

Taper fingers and slender wrist; 

Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; 

So they painted the little maid, 
• •••••••• 

On her hand a parrot green 

Sits unmoving and broods serene/' 

269 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And in his library, in the sunset of life, he enjoyed 
looking out of the big bay-window, over the ex- 
panse of water, watching the tide and craft and sea- 
gulls; and just beyond, Cambridge where he was 
born, Harvard College with which he had been so 
long allied, and Mt. Auburn Cemetery where his re- 
mains would rest. His final volume of poems, pub- 
lished in 1888, was entitled *^ Before the Curfew." 
Its text seemingly is: " The curfew tells me — cover 
up the fire." 

All the years he had been devoted to " The Boys 
of '29," even when ** The poor old raft was going 
to pieces and it was hard to get any together " ; — and 
finally, in 1889, he wrote his parting tribute. So run 
the first three stanzas : — 



ti 



The Play is over. While the light 
Yet lingers in the darkening hall, 

I come to say a last Good-night 
Before the final Exeunt alL 

.We gathered once, a joyous throng ; 

The jovial toasts went gayly round ; 
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, 

We made the floors and walls resound. 

We come with feeble steps and slow, 

A little band of four or five, 
Left from the wrecks of long ago. 

Still pleased to find ourselves alive. 



270 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

So ends * The Boys,' — a lifelong play 
We, too, must hear the Prompter's call 

To fairer scenes and brighter day: 
Farewell! I let the curtain fall." 

It IS pathetic to note that, in the next year, at the 
only subsequent meeting of the class, but three were 
present, and there was no poem. 

After the death of his wife, the genial '' Auto- 
crat " had been guarded very carefully by his son and 
daughter-in-law. The end came quietly on August 
seventh, 1894. His funeral took place from King's 
Chapel, Cambridge, where he had worshipped for 
many years, and he sleeps in Mt. Auburn, not far 
from Longfellow and Lowell — and with his death, 
the famous epoch closes. For many friends he had 
written memorials ; — and among those prepared for 
himself was the following from London " Punch " : — 

" * The Last Leaf,' can it be true 
We have turned It, and on you, 
Friend of all ? 

• ••.•• 

Of sweet singers the most sane, 
Of keen wits the most humane. 

• ....• 
With a manly breadth of soul, 
And a fancy quaint and droll, 

Ripe and mellow. 

• ••..• 
Years your spirit could not tame. 
And they will not dim your fame; 

271 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

England joys 

In your songs, all strength and ease, 
And the dreams you made to please 
Grey-haired boys." 

BILL AND JOE. 

" Come, dear old comrade, you and I 
Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
The shining days when life was new, 
And all was bright with morning dew, 
The lusty days of long ago, 
When you were Bill and I was Joe. 

Your name may flaunt a titled trail 
Proud as a cockereFs rainbow tail, 
And mine as brief appendix wear 
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare; 
To-day, old friend, remember still 
That I am Joe and you are Bill. 

YouVe won the great world's envied prize, 

And grand you look in people's eyes, 

With HON. and LL.D. 

In big brave letters, fair to see, — 

Your fist, old fellow ! off they go ! — 

How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe? 

You've worn the judge's ermined robe; 
You've taught your name to half the globe; 
You've sung mankind a deathless strain ; 
You've made the dead past live again : 
The world may call you what it will, 
But you and I are Joe and Bill. 

272 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

The chaffing young folks stare and say 
* See those old buffers, bent and grey, — 
They talk like fellows in their teens ! 
Mad, poor old boys! That's what it means,'- 
And shake their heads; they little know 
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe! — 

How Bill forgets his hour of pride, 
While Joe sits smiling at his side ; 
How Joe, in spite of time's disguise, 
Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes, — 
Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill 
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill, 

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? 

A fitful tongue of leaping flame; 

A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust, 

That lifts a pinch of mortal dust ; 

A few swift years, and who can show 

Which dust was Bill and which was Joe? 

The weary idol takes his stand, 
Holds out his bruised and aching hand, 
While gaping thousands come and go, — 
How vain it seems, this empty show! 
Till all at once his pulses thrill; — 
'Tis poor old Joe's * God bless you, Bill ! ' 

And shall we breathe in happier spheres 
The names that pleased our mortal ears, 
In some sweet lull of harp and song 
For earth-born spirits none too long. 
Just whispering of the world below 
Where this was Bill and that was Joe ? 

273 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

No matter; while our home is here 
No sounding name is half so dear ; 
When fades at length our lingering day, 
Who cares what pompous tombstones say? 
Read on the hearts that love us still, 
Hie jacet Joe. Hie jacet Bill." 

— Holmes. 



274 



XXVII 

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

Edgar Allan Poe^ the most famous Southern 
author, and one of the renowned literary artists of 
the world, stands apart — a solitary, statuesque figure 
In American literature. Born in the same year with 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the character of the morose 
and sensitive genius was in striking contrast to that 
of the gentle, lovable humourist. 

His grandfather, a Revolutionary patriot, founded 
the family in Maryland; and Poe's dashing young 
father, while studying law in Baltimore in 1805, 
alienated himself from his parents, by marrying a 
pretty English actress, and adopting his wife's pro- 
fession; and it was on January nineteenth, 1809, 
while these strolling players were fulfilling an engage- 
ment in Boston, that Edgar was born; a little later, 
both parents died in the same month, leaving three 
small children to the tender mercies of the world. 
It seems a remarkable fact that all three were 
adopted by wealthy people. 

Mr. Allan, a tobacco merchant of Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, was attracted by the precocious little Edgar, 
and from a home of poverty, he was transferred to 
one of real Southern luxury. Mrs. Allan petted and 

275 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

caressed him, while his foster-father indulged him In 
every wish. At six years old, the gifted child, with 
his bright eyes and dark curls and dressed like a 
prince, would stand upon a table, and, in sweetest 
tone, declaim to guests, or pledge them '' right 
roguishly " in a glass of wine. 

When he was seven, he was taken abroad and 
placed in an English school, and later in Richmond 
was carefully prepared to enter college. With 
musical ear and wonderful memory, he learned to 
recite with surprising effect some of the finest pas- 
sages from the English poets. Literature and his- 
tory, French and Latin, always charmed him. He 
was excellent in debate, led in athletics, and made 
a remarkable swimming record, and the boys culti- 
vated him because he always had plenty of pocket- 
money. 

The University of Virginia had been recently es- 
tablished by the patriotic efforts of Thomas Jefferson, 
and was numbering as Its students distinguished 
young men from all parts of the Southland; and here, 
at seventeen years of age, Poe was admitted — ac- 
complished, capricious. Imperious, and handsome — 
and living In the confidence that he was to Inherit a 
fortune. He won creditable honours as a scholar; 
he covered his walls with his sketches ; wrote rhyming 
squibs to entertain his class ; and presently gave way 
to temptation In drinking and gambling, and after he 
had lost hundreds of dollars, Mr. Allan removed him 

276 



"-^ 



Jl 




■^p 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



SIDNEY LANIER 



IPI 







PAUL H. HAYNE 



EV. JOHN B. TABB 



i - '.i 



r? 



'i 



%'„;'' 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

for a little all went well ; then he began to show con- 
tempt for military duties — any routine annoyed him. 
He wrote Mr. Allan, begging him to recall him, and 
Mr. Allan refusing, he arranged himself to be ex- 
pelled by shirking parole and absenting himself from 
roll-call. He was, as one has said, *' perhaps the 
most gifted, but least creditable cadet that ever 
entered that celebrated school-of-arms." 

Before leaving, he arranged with the cadets to 
subscribe to a volume of his poems which he promised 
to dedicate to them, and as soon as he was free, deter- 
mined to support himself by writing, for authorship 
was the only thing in his life that he ever treated seri- 
ously. Very soon, *' Tamerlane and Other Poems " 
was published, dedicated " To the U. S. Corps of 
Cadets," which the cadets, by the way, thought " rub- 
bish," because they did not contain the promised 
squibs — and apart from West Point, the book made 
no impression in the world. 

From 1 832-1 849, we face the struggling years of 
Poe's life, in which he made his wonderful literary 
record. His aunt, Mrs. Clemm, the one friend al- 
ways faithful to him, was too poor to support him, 
and for a long time after leaving West Point, he suf- 
fered for both food and clothing. One day he 
learned that ** The Saturday Visitor " of Baltimore 
had offered a hundred dollar prize for the best story. 
He wrote ''A MS. Found in a Bottle," and sent 
it in, and was the fortunate winner. John Pendle- 

278 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

ton Kennedy, the statesman-author and one of the 
judges, was interested in this book, so " highly imagi* 
native and a little given to the terrific," and sought 
out its young author, whom he found living in an 
attic in poverty; he offered him full access to the com- 
forts of his home, and a horse to ride when he needed 
exercise. Best of all, he became Poe's literary spon- 
sor, securing him a position on the editorial staff of 
*' The Southern Literary Messenger " of Richmond, 
with an annual salary of five hundred and twenty 
dollars. And now with an assured living, Poe mar- 
ried his ** starry-eyed " little cousin, Virginia Clemm, 
who had always fascinated him and who was now 
just fourteen, and his devotion to his child-wife is 
one of the noblest things in his character. And suc- 
cess came to him; he was asked for all the short 
stories he could write; and as they appeared, they 
won many readers by their striking vigour and 
novelty and their weird, imaginative power. 

Poe was an artist in rhetorical form, and in his edi- 
torial work proved a keen critic of current literature. 
He was really the first to emphasise this form of writ- 
ing. Book after book was sent him for review, and 
he naturally exposed many pretentious humbugs, who 
claimed to be men of letters. But he was too much 
of a free lance, allowing personal feelings to influence 
his mood, and so he made enemies. He took savage 
delight in slashing criticisms of his famous contem- 
poraries; for one, he attacked Longfellow, while 

279 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Longfellow read and admired Poe. As for Grls- 
wold, the compiler of *' Poets and Poetry of Amer- 
ica," he lashed his work so severely that Gris- 
wold revenged himself; for when, after Poe's death, 
he compiled his works, he appended to them such a 
distorted, malicious biography, that although many 
of his statements have been contradicted by later re- 
viewers, it is difficult even yet to be sure of the true 
facts about Poe, 

But whatever mistakes Poe made, he worked with 
rapidity on tales, critiques, and poems ; and the maga- 
zine grew in importance, lengthening its list of sub- 
scribers. He had a happy home with loving wife 
and mother-in-law, and was much honoured in Rich- 
mond society, and the world enjoyed and compli- 
mented his works. 

Suddenly he let fortune slip again; perhaps his 
petty, quarrelsome temper was the cause — -perhaps 
too much conviviality — but in 1837, we find him 
homeless and struggling for means of subsistence. 
He removed to Philadelphia, where he sometimes 
worked as a sort of hack-writer, again as editor, and 
here, in a luxurious Southern home he produced his 
most original work, "Tales of the Grotesque and 
Arabesque." Poe always made it easy to break his 
engagements, and in 1844, he left Philadelphia for 
New York, where he remained for the last five years 
of his short life. Here, too, for his brilliant reputa- 
tion, he was received into the select literary coterie. 

280 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

With artists and men of letters he was a frequent 
guest, at the gatherings at the home of Miss Anna C. 
Lynch, in Waverley Place, and sometimes he brought 
his wife. N. P. Willis, the sentimental poet and 
graceful prose-writer, befriended him and finally as- 
sociated him with himself on '' The Evening Mir- 
ror"; he was, also, at one time editor of "The 
Broadway Journal," and occasionally, took the lec- 
ture platform. 

Yet we may not linger over his successes, for an- 
other conflict is just before him — for now his health 
was shattered by bad habits and overwork, and his 
wife was dying of consumption. Feeling the need 
of country air, they removed in 1847, to a tiny cot- 
tage of four rooms, in Fordham. It still stands 
there, opposite Poe Park, and on its exterior is a 
big, black raven, and a tablet marked, '' Here Poe 
lived." 

Mrs. Clemm was the presiding genius, and never 
was mother-in-law rewarded by sweeter tribute than 
that which Poe dedicated to her as " Mother." She 
deserved it for she gave her life to her two children: 
marketing, cooking, searching the waste-basket for 
manuscripts which she tried to sell, buying clothes 
and gloves and cravats for her '' Eddie " as she al- 
ways called Poe; but the family grew poorer and 
poorer, and sometimes when there was no money, 
Poe, after seeking for work, would walk all the way 
home from New York, proudly, too, with head erect. 

281 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He watched by the bedside of his child-wife as she 
wasted away, and in the bleak winter, in their desti- 
tution, he tried to keep her warm, covering her with 
his great coat and the family cat. 

Bunner has perpetuated the dreary Fordham home 
in a poem from which we quote : — 

" Here lived the soul enchanted 
By melody of song; 
Here dwelt the spirit haunted 
By a demoniac throng; 

Here sang the lips elated ; 
Here grief and death were sated; 
Here loved and here unmated 
Was he, so frail, so strong/' 

After the death of his wife, Poe more than ever 
yielded to despair and opiates. Vain and passionate, 
he believed in himself, and felt himself the victim of 
circumstances rather than wrong-doing. He had 
like a spoiled child, always begging for more; and 
drifted from one friend and one purpose to another 
yet he once said: '' My life has been whim — impulse 
— passion — a longing for solitude — a scorn of all 
things present, in an earnest desire for the future.'' 

His idolised Virginia was the inspiration of his 
"Annabel Lee"; and of '' Eulalie " — the only 
poem that he wrote in 1847 — '^^^ wandering lines 
beginning: — 

282 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

" I dwelt alone 
In a world of moan, 
And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became 
My blushing bride — " 

We may touch but lightly on the facts of Poe's 
own death, which occurred on October seventh, 1849. 
Perhaps he was preparing to marry again and per- 
haps he had just been refused. In passing through 
Baltimore, he was found unconscious in the street, and 
carried to the Marine Hospital where he died. His 
funeral was attended by only eight persons. One 
was a veiled old woman who was often seen later, 
mourning at his grave. 

This grave was unmarked for twenty-five years, 
and then when the facts of Poe's life were more and 
more lost in recognition of his supernatural tales and 
emotional poems, the teachers of the Baltimore 
schools had a memorial slab placed over it, and on 
November seventeenth, 1875, in the presence of a 
large assembly — in which were Walt Whitman and 
other poets — it was consecrated to Poe — '* so frail, 
so strong." 

Our special concern, however, is with Poe's works, 
which form striking contrast to his vacillating career. 
Hawthorne and Poe stand together as our first bril- 
liant tellers of the short story. Hawthorne dwelt on 
conscience and moral beauty ^ — Poe on weird, pas- 

283 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sionate conceits. In his tales there is usually a 
grand, central figure, which, by the way, often re- 
sembles his own personality. The people that move 
in some of the plots are often in most unearthly guise 
— so that nothing stands out distinctly. Again there 
is a secret combining of the strange and terrible, 
which is skilfully unravelled. Some call Poe our 
finest writer of detective stories — surely he was 
our earliest. 

Not what he thought with his natural mind, but 
gloomy forms that came to him when under the in- 
fluence of opium, may have inspired him as they did 
Coleridge. There are so many masterpieces that 
we may not mention all. Among those most read 
are '' Ligeia," '' WiUiam Wilson," " The Pit and 
the Pendulum," and "Hans Pfaall," whose hero 
journeys with his cat, in a balloon, to the moon. 
** Murders in the Rue Morgue," translated into 
French, made France rate Poe most highly. 

'* The Fall of the House of Usher " is typical of 
his style. Here air and landscape are in harmony 
with the gloom and horror of the scene : " the wild 
light, the blood-red moon, the fierce breath of the 
whirlwind, the mighty walls rushing asunder, the 
long, tumultuous shouting like the voice of a thousand 
waters — the deep and dark tarn closing suddenly 
and silently over the fragments of the ' House of 
Usher ' " — with such productions, Poe, conjuror-like, 
enchanted his readers. 

284 



w 

^^»^^ 




I 








o 
< 

Q 

O 
u, 

< 

w 
O 
< 

h 
O 
u 

C/3 

3 o 
^ a, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

Let us turn to his unique poetry. Incapable of 
sustained effort in verse as well as in prose, he did 
not believe in a long poem. The few brief ones, 
known to everybody, are unlike those of any other 
poet of his time. His minstrel harp was his pride. 
To him poetry was " the rhythmical creation of 
beauty." He caught his colouring from the South, 
from Europe, and the Orient, and he embodies in his 
verses ethereal and exquisite strains. Refrain and 
repetend and onomatopoeia are among his rare 
powers — the latter best shown in " The Bells." 

While Holmes and others of his group paid tribute 
to men, Poe perfectly deified women. Among those 
that most influenced him were Mrs. Browning, 
through her poems ; Mrs. Whitman, the poetess, and 
the literary Mrs. Osgood; and to the last two he 
ever turned for sympathy. 

His beautiful but incomprehensible " Israfel " was 
his favourite among his works. This was suggested 
by a line from the Koran, describing *' the angel 
Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has 
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures." It seems 
as if in the last stanza, more than any other, Poe 
soared to his highest expression : — 

" If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 

He might not sing so wildly well 

285 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 
From my lyre within the sky." 

And there is " The Raven," popular at home and 
abroad. The self-possessed fowl, " Once upon a 
midnight dreary," started him by its '* tapping, gently 
tapping," entered his chamber, perched upon a bust 
of Pallas, and in reply to all his questioning, uttered 
the solemn dirge " Never — Nevermore! " 

When Poe had completed the poem, he read it to 
a friend, and then asked him what he thought of it, 
and the answer was : '* I think it uncommonly fine." 
^* Fine! " cried Poe, " is that all you can say of it? 
It is the greatest poem ever written, sir I " Poe liked 
to recite it, and in his melodious voice, he gave it in- 
describable charm, and one could never forget his 
plaintive ''Nevermore!" 

" The Raven " was written, in 1845, ^^ New York, 
and he received for it ten dollars, but — more than 
any other poem — it brought him immediate fame. 
It was copied far and wide and much used as a school 
recitation. The poets read and pondered it, and 
Lowell, in his " Fable for Critics " says: — 

" There comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, 
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge." 

" The Raven " — though somewhat hard to interpret 
: — will always have an abiding place in our literature. 

286 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 

Abroad it was considered Poe's supreme effort ; in- 
deed, his tales and poems are more honoured in 
Europe than those of many of our authors. Tenny- 
son ranked him *' the greatest American genius"; 
and Victor Hugo, " The Prince of American Litera- 
ture." And to-day everywhere one thinks more of his 
writings and less of his sad life. 

On account of his poetic and Platonic affection for 
women, the fair sex has done much to increase his 
fame. A Woman's Club, in Baltimore, is about to 
erect a heroic statue to Poe. It is to be a seated 
figure, representing him in an inspired attitude, and 
to be carved by the noted sculptor, Ezekiel. 

Owing to controversy, regarding his life and writ- 
ings, it was not until 19 10 that the New York " Hall 
of Fame " opened its doors to Poe. In the Metro- 
politan Museum, there is a memorial tablet, in- 
scribed : — 

"He was great in his genius, unhappy in his life, wretched 
in death, and in his fame he is immortal." 

What shall be our verdict? 

ANNABEL LEE. 

It was many and many a year ago 

In a kingdom by the sea, 
That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee; 
And this maiden she lived with no other thought 

Than to love and be loved by me. 

287 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

I was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 
But we loved with a love that was more than love, 

I and my Annabel Lee; 
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 

Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 

My beautiful Annabel Lee; 
So that her highborn kinsmen came 

And bore her away from me, 
To shut her up in a sepulchre 

In this kingdom by the sea. 



But our love it was stronger by far than the love 

Of those who were older than we, 

Of many far wiser than we; 
And neither the angels in heaven above. 

Nor the demons down under the sea. 
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: 

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride. 

In her sepulchre there by the sea. 

In her tomb by the sounding sea. 

—Poe. 
288 



EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849X 
FROM "THE BELLS*' 



" Hear the sledges with the bells, 

Silver bells! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells.^ 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night! 
While the stars, that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 

With a crystalline delight ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells. 

Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

II 

Hear the mellow wedding bells, 
Golden bells! 
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight! 
From the molten-golden notes. 

And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 
How it swells! 
How it dwells 

2S9 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

On the Future! how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells. 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 

—Poe. 



290 



XXVIII 

OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

Poe's name Is, thus far, the greatest In Southern lit- 
erature, and in the colouring of his tales and the 
music of his verse, he shows many touches of the 
Southland. His life, however, seems to relate itself 
more to the North — but as we have said, he stands 
apart from any group. Before considering other in- 
dividual lives, we look briefly at the conditions that 
existed in the South before the Civil War. 

There was no public school system; the wealthy 
employed tutors, or sent their children abroad to be 
educated. There were no great publishing-houses; 
no literary centres as Philadelphia, New York, Bos- 
ton, or Concord. Puritanism and Transcendentalism 
were almost unknown. The hum of the mill and the 
factory was not often heard and there was little com- 
mercialism. The hospitable plantation mansion was 
presided over by the cordial but aristocratic gentle- 
man. Its spirit imitated that of English rural life, 
and the study of English manners and English liter- 
ature was most popular. 

The pride of the South lay in her long line of 
orators and statesmen, and the famous documents and 
addresses that she had given to the Union in Its 

291 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

formative period. Virginia laid stress upon being 
" The Mother of Presidents." So law and oratory 
and politics belonged to Southern traditions, rather 
than American literature, which was somewhat ig- 
nored, being considered trashy. One subject, how- 
ever, was of such vital import that it was constantly 
discussed, and this was the institution of slavery. It 
came increasingly to the fore; the Northerners de- 
claimed against it so fiercely that the Southerners 
must needs wonder what they would better do with it; 
and we have spoken in a previous chapter of the ora- 
tory to which this gave rise. 

But there were a few writers of note on other sub- 
jects; among them, John Pendleton Kennedy (1795- 
1870), a brilliant statesman and one of our earliest 
novelists, who, in his books, happily reproduced an 
era that has gone. In his '* Horse-shoe Robinson," 
he enlarges on the traditions of South Carolina and 
Revolutionary days; while his '* Swallow Barn" 
photographs the customs of a Virginia plantation, at 
the end of the eighteenth century. *' The aristo- 
cratic old edifice sets like a brooding-hen, on the 
Southern bank of the James River " — and in typical 
Southern style. Kennedy describes as follows the 
master's dress as he rides to the court-house : — 

" He IS then apt to make his appearance in a coat of blue 
broadcloth, astonishingly glossy, and with an unusual amount 
of plaited ruffles strutting through the folds of a Marseilles 

292 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

waistcoat. A worshipful finish is given to this costume by 
a large straw hat, lined with green silk. There is a magis- 
terial fulness in his garments which betokens conditions in 
the world, and a heavy bunch of seals, suspended by a 
chain of gold, jingles as he moves, pronouncing him a man 
of superfluities." 

Another writer of this period was William Gil- 
more Simms (1806-1870), the alert Charleston 
author, who aspired to lay the foundation of a dis- 
tinct Southern literature. He made his home the 
centre of a group of ambitious young men of letters, 
and he begged them to work and hold together until 
the world should acknowledge their achievements. 
It is well that he could not then foresee the blight 
that the Civil War would cast over their brave 
efforts. 

Simms was an indefatigable writer of thirty novels 
and seventeen volumes of poetry, besides plays, his- 
torical essays, and political pamphlets. His novels 
which are all that live to-day are very diverse. He 
made good historical backgrounds; his scenery was 
picturesque ; but his style was pompous, and his finish 
rough and careless. Feuds and intrigues and mas- 
sacres and block-house fights took part in the quick 
action of his plots. He so often introduced the In- 
dian that he is styled ''The Cooper of the South." 
His best tale, "The Yemassee," written in 1835, 
furnishes a striking picture of the Southern wilderness, 

^93 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In which is an uprising of real, wide-awake Indians. 

Among his other works, are '* The Partisan," 
" Donna Florida," and '' The Damsel of Darien." 
Whenever he had finished a book, he was obliged to 
take a sea-voyage from Charleston to New York in 
order to arrange with a publisher. The war ruined 
his prospects, and destroyed his lovely country home, 
** Woodlands," where for years generous hospitality 
had been dispensed. Boys yet eagerly read Simms's 
adventures, which bring anew an interesting era of 
nearly a century ago; and he must be regarded the 
pioneer and patron of early Southern literature. 
Two of the members of the literary group in Charles- 
ton — of which he was the genius — were Timrod 
and Hayne. 

Henry Timrod (1829- 1867), was one of the most 
finely endowed of Southern poets. As an editor in 
Columbia, his printing-office was demolished in Sher- 
man's '* March to the Sea "; but it is as the lyrist of 
love and war and Nature that he displays his clear- 
ness and simplicity of utterance. Among his ring- 
ing war lyrics are '' The Call to Arms " and '* Caro- 
lina " ; and their strain is as direct and lofty an ex- 
pression of Southern sentiment as some of Whittier's 
are of Northern. His finest ode was written for the 
decoration of the soldiers' graves in Magnolia Ceme- 
tery. His spontaneous Nature passion, he has shown 
in several poems of singular beauty. Here is a 
stanza to Spring: — 

294 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

*' In the deep heart of every forest tree 2 

The blood is all aglec, 
And there's a look about the leafless bowers 
As if they dreamed of flowers." 

Timrod's life was brief, and the two years left him 
after the war was over, were but a struggle with 
hopeless illness and dire poverty. 

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886), is ranked 
*' The Laureate of the South." With a beautiful 
home, embracing a fine library — every social advan- 
tage that aristocratic Charleston could offer — and an 
ample fortune — he found it easy to devote his talents 
to literature. He was selected as the first editor of 
*' Russell's Magazine," which, launched in Simms's 
library, was intended to equal in popularity " The 
Edinburgh Review." Hayne was also the author of 
many forms of verse — all of them correct in metre 
and profusely figurative. Indeed, in every way, a 
bright career seemed opening out before him. Then 
the war came, and he served in the field until too ill 
either to march or to fight, and at its close, his health 
was shattered and his fortune lost. To gain support 
and vigour, he fashioned in the Pine Barrens of 
Northern Georgia a rude hut, like that of Thoreau, 
at Walden Pond. He planted flowers and fruits, 
and " Copse Hill " was the gathering-place for his 
admiring friends. 

With a courageous soul, he turned his thoughts 

295 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to Nature, working to the end, on legends and lyrics, 
for which he found inspiration right about his forest 
home — in violet or lily, or pine-cone, or lake or 
storm. The song of the mocking-bird allured him 
as that of the lark did Shelley — for he tells how its 

". . . love notes fill the enchanted land; 
Through leaf-wrought bars they storm the stars, 
These love-songs of the mocking-birds!'* 

Again : — 

" When the winds are whist, 
He follows his mate to their sunset tryst, 
Where the wedded myrtles and jasmine twine, 
Oh! the swell of his music is half divine! " 

We have already referred to another poet, Father 
Ryan, who as chaplain in the Confederate army 
voiced his attachment to the South. His '' Sword of 
Robert Lee " is a stirring battle-cry, while "The 
Conquered Banner " is an *' eloquent lament " over 
defeat. Indeed, Ryan has been called *' The Laure- 
ate of the Lost Cause." Some of his poems, however, 
are deeply religious; and there was, also. Father 
Tabb, who served in the Confederate army, was 
taken prisoner, and placed in Point Lookout. Later, 
he was ordained a priest of the Roman Church and 
became a teacher in St. Charles College, Maryland. 

296 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

During his last years he was blind, and his stanzas of 
rarely more than eight lines are becoming generally 
known and winning favour. In these, he gives artis- 
tic expression to a single thought, either grave or gay. 
As one has said: *' These little lyrics flew like song- 
birds from his seclusion"; and they are well worth 
memorising, as for example : — 

"The waves forever move; 

The hills forever rest; 
[Yet each the heavens approve, 

And love alike hath blessed. — 
A Martha's household care, 
A Mary's cloistered prayer." 

Another one *' Solitude " : — 

" Like as a brook that all night long 
Sings, as at noon, a babble song 
To sleep's unheeding ear, 
The poet to himself must sing, 
When none but God is listening 
The lullaby to hear." 

And how sweetly he proclaims his simple Creed 
in his poem, *' The Christ": — 

"Thou hast on earth a Trinity, — 
Thyself, my fellow-man, and me; 
When one with him, then one with Thee; 
Nor, save together. Thine are we." 
297 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Of this band of Southland poets, Sidney Xanier 
( 1 842-1881), ranks next to Poe in his ideals and 
poetic impulse; but his life-story has in it the same 
pathos that belongs to the lives of Timrod and Hayne 
— the desolation of Civil War, and the later almost 
despairing conflict with feebleness and lack of means. 
He was born in Macon, Georgia, on February third, 
1842, and claimed a musical ancestry, even as far 
back as Queen Elizabeth. So it was natural that 
even before he could read well, he could improvise 
upon the flute, guitar, piano and organ — and he 
might have included the violin, had not his father 
discovered that its music affected him strangely. 

He graduated at Oglethorpe College, and feeling 
called to a literary career, he was hoping for a year 
abroad at a German university. But he was sud- 
denly awakened from his dreams by the opening guns 
of the Civil War. Responding to the appeals of im- 
passioned orators as the war fever swept over the 
Southern States, he joined the Confederate army. 
Three times he was offered promotion, but preferred 
to remain with a younger brother who enlisted with 
him. Finally, he was captured and imprisoned in 
Point Lookout; but he carried with him his beloved 
flute concealed in his sleeve, and with it he enlivened 
many tedious hours for the other prisoners, during 
the five months he was held here. On his release, 
he made way on foot to his home in Macon. He 
was an excellent critic and in his novel, " Tiger 

298 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

Lilies," he later gave his war impressions; and he 
never recovered from the hard conditions that he had 
faced. 

After the war, he was at one time a clerk, at an- 
other he studied law with his father, for he said that 
he had to win bread for his family while a thousand 
songs were ringing in his heart. When he could no 
longer endure such an existence, *' taking his flute 
and pen for sword and staff,'' he went to live in Balti- 
more, for there he could listen to orchestras and 
browse on libraries. Music and poetry were his 
two master passions. The rest of his life he con- 
tended against poverty and the ravages of consump- 
tion. 

He was one of the marvellous flute-players of 
America, and as a flutist won his way everywhere, 
and soon obtained a position in the Peabody Orches- 
tra. He was greatly attracted to such music, and 
formed a scheme for travelling orchestras so that 
young people might be educated to an appreciation of 
the finest symphonies. 

He read and studied and wrote so diligently that 
he was soon known in Baltimore as a man of letters. 
He loved quaint and curious bits of literature and 
embodied them in books for boys. Among them 
were '' The Boy's King Arthur," '' The Boy's Percy," 
and *' The Boy's Froissart." He also wrote excel- 
lent critical studies on English verse and the English 
novel. 

299 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Like Timrod and Hayne, Lanier is filled with the 
spirit of the Southland. His poetic themes are love, 
Nature, and faith, and in remarkable feeling for tone 
and colour, expressed in felicitous words. His 
poems are among the rarest in our literature, and a 
few extracts are chosen: — 

" Music is love in search of a word." 



" His song was only living aloud, 
His work, a singing with his hands." 



" Thou'rt only a grey and sober dove, 
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love." 

His " Corn " which is full of '' green things grow- 
ing " has often been counted his master-song, for 
when it came out in ** Lippincott's," in 1874, it drew 
attention to his other poetry. 

We seldom find a Southern robin in literature ; but 
Lanier, in *' lyrical outburst," writes his '' Tampa 
Robin " : — 

" The robin laughed in the orange-tree ; 
* Ho, windy North, a fig for thee : 
While breasts are red and wings are bold 
And green trees wave us globes of gold, 
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me 
— Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree. 
• • • •• • . • 

" ril south with the sun and keep my clime; 
My wing is king of the summer-time ; 

300 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; 
And ril call down through the green and gold, 
Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me. 
Bestir thee under the orange-tree 1 ** 

Would we know of Lanier's euphony, read a 
stanza from his " Song of the Chattahoochee," which 
ripples and flows along like Tennyson's " Brook " : — 

" Out of the hills of Habersham, 
Down the valleys of Hall, ^ 

I hurry amain to reach the plain. 
Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
Split at the rock and together again. 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side, 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain. 
Far from the hills of Habersham, 
Far from the valleys of Hall.'' 

In his '' Ballad of Trees and the Master," Lanier 
shows his power in religious verse. In this he rever- 
ently touches the life of our Lord, in his dramatic 
presentation of the scenes in Gethsemane and on 
Calvary; while his noblest poem, "The Marshes of 
Glynn," manifests in sweeping and rhythmic metre, 
his earnest faith in God. In all Lanier's writings, 
one detects his intense love of beauty and his attempt 
to correlate music and poetry. 

He received the appointment of lecturer on Eng- 
lish literature in Johns Hopkins University, Balti- 

301 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

more, but he could not hold it long on account of fail- 
ing strength; and he travelled much but he grew 
weaker and weaker. The glow of sunrise had ever 
been in his poems — '' Sunrise " was his swan-song, 
and thus it ended : — 



u 



The sun is brave, the sun Is bright, 
The sun is lord of love and light. 
But after him it cometh night '* — 



and his short, troubled life closed on September 
seventh, 1881. 

The names of Timrod, Hayne, and Lanier, will 
have lasting place in every anthology of American 
men of letters, by reason of their pure and elevating 
gifts, and the sadness and courage of their lives. 

Lanier believed implicitly that his Southland would 
be redeemed; but he could not in most eager vision 
have prophesied the wondrous evolution of the New 
South. Here plough and mill and factory are busily 
at work. Public schools are established all over the 
land, and everywhere cities are rapidly growing. 
And what wonderful strides have been made in liter- 
ary progress — enough to satisfy the most wide-awake 
reader. Our story does not concern living authors, 
else we should dwell upon the fascinating masters ot 
the story that perhaps first caught their genius for 
construction from Edgar Poe. Vivid and romantic 
pictures there are of quaint ^* Old Creole Days''; 

302 



OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 

** The Grandissimes '* is replete with episode and 
mirth; ** Dr. Sevier" is delicate and artistic. 

Lovable " Uncle Remus " introduces us to '' Brer 
Rabbit," '' Brer Fox " and ** Brer B'ar," who fas- 
cinate us alike with folk-lore and philosophy. ** In 
Ole Virginia " we read of plantation life during the 
war. Who does not know ** Marse Chan " and 
'' Meh Lady " ? 

Another lures us away into the remote wilds of the 
Tennessee mountains, and lets us into the secrets of 
a gloomy and powerful race ; and then we may emerge 
into the broad sunshine of the Kentucky ** blue-grass 
region " — listen to the song of the cardinal, and revel 
in the witchery of meadows and hempfields, sunny 
skies, and wild forests, as pictured in the sketches of 
its literary artist. Maurice Thompson speaks of the 
South as the land 

" . . whose gaze is cast 
No more upon the past." 



303 



XXIX 



WESTERN LITERATURE 



Very like the New England colonists were the self- 
reliant pioneers of the West, working shoulder to 
shoulder, with push and energy, following the trail 
over the aboriginal mountains or through the dense 
woods, fighting Indians or wild beasts, mining for 
gold, or building camps and towns — and their as- 
sertive, democratic character is seen in the books of 
their authors as in the speeches of their political lead- 
ers; and while in the South, we have the note of the 
lyrist or the romancer, in the West, we may gather 
tales of bold and picturesque adventure. 

With scant traditions and few high schools, the 
busy West made a tardy beginning in literature, but 
its growth has been unchecked, until to-day as we fol- 
low the sweep of civilisation across our broad land, 
we find an unbroken line of authors. We study the 
lives of some of these to learn what has been accom- 
plished. 

First, there is Bret Harte (1839-1902), who is a 
kind of historian of an early era, for his renown rests 
on his making California life — in phases both good 
and bad — known to the world in the days of the 
modern Argonauts. The son of a Greek professor 

304 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

of Albany, New York, he was deemed a precocious 
rather than a scholarly boy; but even at seven, he 
pored over Dickens, just because he liked his way of 
saying things. As he older grew, visions of golden 
air-castles floated before him as he marvelled at the 
almost unbelievable stories that came to the East — 
of the finds of California — stories that lured many 
a youth to the then distant Pacific coast. 

When he was fifteen, his father having died, he 
took his mother and started West to pick up a for- 
tune ready to his hand. What unusual scenes must 
have opened on the eyes of both mother and son 
when they reached California, coming as they did 
from dignified, conservative Albany ! For they were 
at once face to face with novel and chaotic social con- 
ditions; this sparsely-settled land of majestic moun- 
tains, primeval forests, rugged canyons, and flashing 
sea-coast, had been suddenly altered into a very wild- 
wood of freedom. 

Few women were to be seen; but thousands of men 
in red shirts and high-topped boots were digging for 
gold; some of them heroic men, delving with restless, 
homesick energy for a hoard just large enough to 
transport their families thither. Rugged workmen, 
too, there were; and vagabonds and fugitives from 
justice — and they varied the digging by gambling 
and duelling and much easy sword practice. 

But Harte did not, at once, enter into his " El 
Dorado." After a time his mother married again. 

305 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He made many ventures, he policed the safes of the 
*' Wells and Fargo Express Company " from bandits; 
he was, in turn, collector, druggist, school-teacher, 
and secretary of the mint, and finally from being a 
printer, he graduated into editorial work, and was 
one of a group of young journalists — among them 
was Mark Twain — all full of hope in the future; 
and Harte was later made editor of the newly-started 
'' Overland Monthly." 

His various occupations had taken him all over the 
country, and with rare mimetic quality and keen sen- 
sitiveness for the spectacular, he had collected ma- 
terials for many short stories, and these were his gold 
mines which he profitably worked for years. They 
were not like those of Dickens but written in the same 
sympathetic spirit — and with Irving, Poe, and Haw- 
thorne, he is conspicuous among our creators of the 
short story. His style is individual and he has an 
astounding vocabulary. Most of his characters are 
apprehended with realistic humour and pathos, from 
real life. 

After several of Harte's books had been published 
and welcomed, it was suggested that they would be 
even more telling, if he would try romance. Then 
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " appeared. Its 
characterisation was so rough and unusual that it was 
severely criticised, but it attracted notice everywhere, 
and " The Atlantic " immediately asked for another 
story after the same manner. This gave Bret Harte 

306 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

reputation for his tales, while " The Heathen 
Chinee," somewhat later, made his name as a 
humourous poet. 

At this period, Chinese '' cheap labour " was the 
war-cry and ** He went for the Heathen Chinee! " 
and immortalised him. Many other poems of 
Harte's are very popular; so, as well, are his prose 
tales, for he was an incessant writer. He had no 
rival in his descriptions of old California sights and 
sounds. Sometimes he delivered lectures; the one 
most often heard was " The Argonauts of Forty- 
nine." But slow of thought and speech, he cared 
little for lecturing. 

A man of strong impulse, he was weak in charac- 
ter; he was true to a present friend while ignoring an 
absent one. He was uncertain in keeping appoints 
ments and most improvident in financial concerns; 
there was a vein of satire in his editorial columns that 
grew more evident; he did not hold his own in the 
world of letters; and after a few years, he lost favour 
in San Francisco. He came East and wrote for 
*' The Atlantic " and other periodicals. He lived 
an irregular life, always beyond his income, and 
finally, in 1878, left his family to accept the consulate 
at Crefeld, Germany, and was soon transferred to 
Glasgow, Scotland; but he was " a wandering comet " 
— he did not meet his duties squarely — and was 
presently removed from the consular service. 

However, as a polished gentleman and a man of 

307 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

letters, he was taken more seriously in England than 
elsewhere. England liked his books, placed them 
on her book-shelves, and highly estimated their 
author. And in England he spent his later years and 
died, in 1902, at Camberly, Surrey. And Wood- 
berry says : — 

" He had no rival and left no successor. His work is as 
unique as that of Poe or Hawthorne." 

From Bret Harte's career, it is pleasant to review 
that of Eugene Field (i 850-1 895), for he is the 
laureate that the Middle West has given to children. 
His first leaning towards literature came to him 
when as a little boy in St. Louis, his grandmother 
made him write sermons, and paid him ninepence 
for every one that he wrote. He was very carefully 
educated but he could not graduate at college, for 
his father died and the money gave out. But he was 
soon hard at work at journalism and finally settled in 
Chicago, engaged on the editorial staff of '' The 
Daily News." 

He describes as follows the romance of his life : — 

" A little bit of a woman came 
Athwart my path one day; 



That little bit of a woman cast 
Her two eyes full on me, 

308 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

And they smote me sore to my inmost core 
And they held me slaved forevermore, 
Yet would I not be free. 



And Vm proud to say that I bless the day 
When a little woman wrought her way 
Into this life of mine! " 

And in Chicago, this winsome man and his family 
were perfectly idolised. He was the leader of " The 
Saints' and Sinners' Club," the '' Saints " being three 
Chicago clergymen. He illustrated manuscripts for 
his friends and in many directions interested them in 
literature. He treasured his books, using the gentlest 
touch in opening and closing them. He was a gath- 
erer of rare editions : — 

'* Such as bibliophiles adore — 
Books and prints in endless store — 
Treasures singly or in sets." 

His poems and prose later have won alike the 
hearts of grown-ups and children; but especially to 
the latter, he dedicated exquisite lines — and how 
they, in return, lavished upon him their affection. To 
assist in his work, he kept in his library a curious col- 
lection of toys and trinkets and dolls and animals; 
and '* each spinster doll, and each toy animal and 
each tin soldier, had a part to play in some poem." 
The best-known of his works are *' A Little Book of 

309 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Western Verse," and "A Little Book of Profitable 
Tales,'' and a variety of juveniles appear in these. 
Who that has read it can ever forget '' Little Boy 
Blue "? Or who can overlook the moral so pathet- 
ically emphasised in that "little peach of emerald 
hue " that dawned on the sight of Johnny Jones and 
his sister Sue? 

" John took a bite and Sue a chew, 
And then the trouble began to brew, — 
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue, 
Too true! 

Under the turf where the daisies grew, 
They planted John and his sister Sue, 
And their little souls to the angels flew, — 
Boohoo!" 

Field hoped to write a *' Modern Mother Goose," 
founded upon Indian folk-lore, but this he was un- 
able to do. 

He was a universal joker, and he had great power 
of adaptation, even to taking the epitaph on Shakes- 
peare's tomb and fitting it as follows to his own por- 
trait, and as an advertisement for his works : — 

" Sweete friends, for mercy's sake forbeare 
To criticise ys visage here; 
But reade my bookes 
Which, spite my lookes 
Ben fuUe of mightie plaisaunt cheere/' 

Another like Bret Harte, to preserve contemporary 

310 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

life in the West, was Samuel J. Clemens, so familiarly- 
known as Mark Twain, the celebrated humourist, 
standing perhaps above, and separate from the other 
two. Born in Missouri, he spent his boyhood in 
Hannibal. Possibly he would not have called this so 
feelingly *' a loafy, down-at-the heel, slave-holding 
Mississippi town," if he could have imagined that, 
in 19 1 2, his first home would be presented to the city 
by Mr. and Mrs. George A. Mahan; and accom- 
panied by a bas-relief portrait, and a memorial tablet, 
which bears these words : — 

" Mark Twain's life teaches that poverty is an incentive 
rather than a bar, and that any boy, however humble his 
hirth and surroundings, may by honesty and industry ac- 
complish great things.'' 

Samuel's father died when he was but twelve, and 
he left school to become a printer, a vocation which 
he pursued in different places for eight years; and 
printing the words of others led him to the desire of 
being an author himself, and yet his strongest am- 
bition was to serve as pilot on the Mississippi; and 
when the opportunity came, he gladly quit printing, 
and hoped to live a pilot and die at the wheel, but 
during the war, the river lost its commerce. 

He next went to visit Nevada, the land of outlaws, 
mining-camps, and murders. He did not escape the 
mining fever and journeyed to California — then wan- 
dered away to the Sandwich Islands. In San Fran- 
cisco, he reported for a newspaper; his humourous 

3H 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sketches brought him into notice, and he began to lec- 
ture. Later, he travelled in Europe, Egypt, and the 
Holy Land. Then as partner in a publishing-house 
that failed, he lost every cent of his well-earned for- 
tune ; and like Walter Scott, in similar emergency, he 
assumed the whole debt and wrote untiringly until he 
had paid every penny of the firm's indebtedness. In 
his last years, Mark Twain lived in Hartford, Con- 
necticut, where he and his wife entertained delight- 
fully, and yet a later home was at Redding, not very 
far distant. 

The bare facts of this life do not sound literary, 
but few Americans hold a more secure place in the 
affection of readers of all classes than Mark Twain; 
and we have hurried over the plain facts that we may 
take a second view from a literary standpoint, and 
first as to his early scholarly preferences, and these 
they were: " I like history, biography, travels, curi- 
ous facts and strange happenings, and science; and 
I detest novels, poetry, and theology." His views 
certainly changed in time — at least in regard to 
novels. 

In the beginning, he wrote much for boys : for fol- 
lowing in the steps of T. B. Aldrich's " Bad Boy," his 
*' Tom Sawyer " and " Huckleberry Finn " embody 
experiences of his boyhood. " Tom Sawyer " is a 
tale of his days spent at a wretched Western school, 
and into it, are woven Indians and witches and charms, 
a maiden, a bit of camp life — all actual scenes en- 

312 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

acted by wide-awake boys; while "Huckleberry 
Finn " — " The Odyssey of the Mississippi " — holds 
the interest by the novelty of its incidents. Perhaps 
the vital one is when Huck debates with himself 
whether it is his duty to save Jim, the runaway slave, 
or to deliver him to his master. '' Huckleberry 
Finn " is Mark Twain's classic. 

His *' Stories of the Mississippi Valley " form an 
amusing fragment of his own autobiography. Over 
and over he heard the sounder cry out *' mark twain ! " 
as the lead drops two fathoms, and in this quaint, 
practical phrase originated his pen-name. He had a 
knack as a pilot of picking up all sorts of specimens of 
human nature, and presenting them to the reader; and 
the " Father of Waters '' itself, here and elsewhere 
in his books, inspired him as the Hudson inspired Irv- 
ing. 

After his extensive travels, he wrote his *' Inno- 
cents Abroad," and afterwards his '' Tramps 
Abroad "; the former specially is inexpressibly funny 
with the pretensions of some of the ** Innocents " in 
their absurd situations — and as long as the world 
laughs, it will be popular. It has been published in 
several languages, and rewarded its author with fame 
and fortune. 

" Pudd'nhead Wilson '' is a slave story with a most 
philosophic hero. 

Twain's *' Jumping Frog " — known to everybody 
— was written in San Francisco. Bret Harte said 

313 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

that it never could be so funny to anyone as to him 
when Mark Twain repeated it in his drawling tones. 
There is much beauty and a stern sense of justice in 
his '' Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc." His 
English stories, '' The Prince and the Pauper," and 
" A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court," 
are placed against carefully studied backgrounds. 

To call Mark Twain just a humourist would be as 
one has said to describe Shakespeare as a strolling- 
player. Back of his humour are always the philoso- 
pher and reformer. He loved to hit hard at hypocrisy 
and every insincerity, and admired noble character. 
As to his emphatic style, he had a saying: *' As to the 
adjective, when in doubt, strike it out!" And yet 
with Franklin, Holmes, and Lowell, his humour was 
most genial, even though the underlying purpose was 
clear. 

Many Clemensesque experiences might be re- 
corded, did space permit. The accompanying one is 
pleasing or trying, which ever we choose to think it : 

One morning going to breakfast before his wife, 
he discovered at her plate a bulky envelope bearing 
foreign stamps. His curiosity overcame him; he 
opened it to find a detailed account of his own death 
and burial in Australia, — and a note of condolence 
to Mrs. Clemens. The description was so touching 
that it moved him to tears, and later when he was in 
Australia, he visited the tomb of the impostor wlio 
had impersonated him there. 

314 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

And in closing, just one reference to his unswerving 
love to his family, as evinced when he had the fol- 
lowing epitaph by Robert Richardson placed over his 
daughter's grave : — 

"Warm Summer sun, 

Shine kindly here, 
Warm Southern wind 

Blow softly here, 
Green sod above 

Lie light, He light, 
Good night, dear heart, 

Good night, good night." 

He founded at Redding, a public library, and since 
his death Mr. Andrew Carnegie has made this self- 
supporting, to be known for ever as '' The Mark 
Twain Memorial Library." 

Of Mark Twain, Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke has 
written : — 

" Those who know the story of his friendship and his 
family life know that he was one who * loved much ' and 
faithfully, even unto the end. Those who know his work 
as a whole know that under the lambent and irrepressible 
humour which was his gift there was a foundation of seri- 
ous thought and noble affections and desires." 

And out of the new West have come other writers. 
Among them, Edward Eggleston, the editor, novelist, 
and itinerant preacher, who, in his Hoosier stories, 
has made us acquainted with picturesque characters 

315 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and log-cabin life. And if we would seek a master- 
bard, *' The Poet of the Sierras '' has long stood apart 
like a mountain peak, giving to the world from time 
to time glimpses of wild beauty and rugged grandeur 
as h^ has written of Western scenery and people; and 
he yet lives to reminisce of the early California days. 
And now some of our best poets and historians and 
novel-writers are in the Western States. As truly as 
** Westward the course of Empire holds its way " — 
so truly, " Westward the course of literature shall 
hold its way." 

WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD 

(Dutch Lullaby.) 

" Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night 
Sailed off in a wooden shoe, — 
Sailed on a river of crystal light, 

Into a sea of dew. 
' Where are you going, and what do you wish ? ' 

The old moon asked the three. 
* We have come to fish for the herring-fish 
That live in this beautiful sea; 
Nets of silver and gold have we! ' 
Said Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod. 

The old moon laughed and sang a song, 

As they rocked in the wooden shoe, 
And the wind that sped them all night long 

Ruffled the waves of dew. 

316 



WESTERN LITERATURE 

The little stars were the herring-fish 
That lived in the beautiful sea — 
* Now cast your nets wherever you wish,— 
Never af eared are we ! ' 
So cried the stars to the fishermen three: 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod. 

All night long their nets they threw 

To the stars in the twinkling foam, — 
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, 

Bringing the fishermen home; 
'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed 

As if it could not be, 
And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed 
Of sailing that beautiful sea; 
But I shall name you the fishermen three: 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod. 

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, 

And Nod is a little head. 
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies 

Is a wee one's trundle-bed ; 
So shut your eyes while mother sings 

Of wonderful sights that be, 
And you shall see the beautiful things 
As you rock in the misty sea. 
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three: 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod." 

-^ Field. 
317 



XXX 

A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

It takes many lives to form a rounded literary tale, 
and the following chapter contains a few vignettes of 
others who claim mention in our book; most of them 
have died so recently that we could not, if we would, 
place them in fair perspective. Prominent among 
these are Taylor, Crawford, Hale, Stockton, Whit- 
man, Stoddard, Stedman, and Aldrich. 

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), was a Pennsylvania 
boy of Quaker family, of whom a phrenologist early 
foretold that his vagabond instincts would control 
his life; and with a hundred and forty dollars, a few 
newspaper promises, his knapsack and wunderstaff, 
he started out at nineteen to fulfil the prophecy; he 
spent two years in Europe, tramping over three thou- 
sand miles, and learning to live on six cents a day. 
This sojourn his biographer calls his " University 
education." 

On his return, his letters to " The New York Trib- 
une " and other papers were collected into a volume, 
and readers were enthusiastic over the pluck displayed 
in " Views Afoot." One has wondered what he might 
have accomplished if he had owned a bicycle — for 
with feet attached to pedals, '* Views A-Bicycle " 

318 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

would have multiplied his opportunities a hundred- 
fold. Then when the gold fever of '49 caught the 
East, he followed the Argonauts to California as cor- 
respondent of the ** Tribune," and took in Mexico on 
the way back. 

In later trips, he wandered from Iceland to Cape 
of Good Hope, and in the East as far as India, China, 
and Japan, always with pen in hand, mastering lan- 
guages, wearing native dress, and as far as possible 
assimilating native customs. So his travel books are 
glowing pictures of actual things, but they are utterly 
devoid of the historical setting that would have en- 
hanced their value. At one time he was secretary of 
the United States legation at St. Petersburg, and he 
died in 1878, while on a mission to Germany. 

In his writings, he emphasised his love for his early 
home, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, by building 
there his stately residence '* Cedarcroft "; and it is 
with this that his novels are associated. *' The Story 
of Kennett " is by many ranked his best book. He 
acquired extensive knowledge of German classics, and 
among his translations, that of Goethe's *' Faust " is 
most faithful and sympathetic. He was, also, an in- 
teresting lecturer on a wide range of themes, but he 
cared not to be noted either as traveller or lecturer, 
and his aim was to be a famous poet. 

This ideal he never reached; he had lyrical genius 
and has written a fair amount of verse — but he may 
not be ranked great; for his versatility hindered con- 

319 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

centrated effort, and besides he wasted talent on what 
was commonplace. His finest dramatic poem un- 
doubtedly is '' The Masque of the Gods." His 
'' Centennial Ode " was read at Philadelphia, in 
1876. Among his longer poems is *'Lars: a pas- 
toral of Norway "; in his lyrics is '' The Song of the 
Camp," in which are the familiar lines: — 

** The bravest are the tenderest, 
The loving are the daring." 

His " Bedouin Song," is thought by some to hold its 
own among our choicest love lyrics. 

This self-made man was master of a score of lan- 
guages, and shared fellowship with authors the earth 
around, and he wrote more than fifty books. He is 
remembered, however, as poet and translator. 

Marion Crawford (i 854-1 909), the son of a 
sculptor, was born in Rome, and spent so much of his 
life there and in other foreign cities, that in Italy he 
was taken for an Italian — in France for a French- 
man — in Germany for a German. One of the 
most prolific of writers, he published in twelve years 
twenty-five books — his daily output of words being 
sometimes six thousand. 

His style was free from mannerisms; and always 
the cities where he lived, the streets and people and 
houses, grew into his pages, and he fearlessly painted 
existing conditions. And a wide circle caught the 

320 



A GROUP OP EASTERN AUTHORS 

spirit of his intellectual and artistic novels, and as he 
owned, '' they became in his hands a marketable com- 
modity." To characterise his numerous works 
would be entirely beyond our scope. His first, '' Mr. 
Isaacs," is full of Oriental colouring. " The Cigar- 
Maker's Romance " is, perhaps, most perfect in form; 
while the *' Saracinesca Trilogy," with the scenes laid 
in modern Rome, has hosts of readers. 

Edward Everett Hale (i 822-1909), for his opti- 
mistic devotion to his native city, has been called " A 
Bostonian of Bostonians." For more than fifty 
years, he was a prominent Unitarian minister, and 
he also showed wonderful versatility as a lecturer, 
writer of essays, history and biography, and a mas- 
ter-craftsman of short stories. In these, like De 
Foe, he made fictitious subjects appear real. 

The best illustration of his art is " The Man With- 
out a Country." In this, an officer who is being tried 
for treasonable conduct curses his native land; on 
this account, he is condemned to spend his life for- 
ever at sea, and never in any way to hear the United 
States mentioned, or to read a word concerning it. 
This story, with its grave moral, was quoted the world 
over as true ; and appearing as it did in the time of the 
Civil War, it did much to quicken the patriotism of 
both soldiers and sailors. 

And Edward Everett Hale identified himself with 
many philanthropic projects. His Waldensian story, 
*' In His Name," was widely read; while his '* Ten 

321 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Times One is Ten," proposing the formation of circles 
of '' King's Sons " and '* Daughters " has carried im- 
mense force everywhere, for its motto is : — " Look 
up and not down; Look forward and not back; Look 
out and not in; and lend a hand." 

Francis Richard Stockton (1834-1902), another 
writer of brief stories, resembles Edward Everett 
Hale, in that he, too, made fiction seem reality, and 
yet in his whimsical romances, he stands quite alone. 
His fantastic characters, set in the oddest kind of 
plots, encounter ridiculous and bewildering experi- 
ences; and all are treated with such seriousness and 
quiet dignity that as we breathlessly watch absurd peo- 
ple do absurd things, for the moment everything be- 
comes true. Among Stockton's creations are '' The 
Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine," 
'' The Hundredth Man," and " The Lady or the 
Tiger?" 

Young people are not usually fascinated with the 
problems which Walt Whitman, with keen directness, 
presents in his writings; but his name is so noteworthy 
among our men of letters that we obey the summons 
to glance at his life and work as we pass along. The 
literary world is always trying to decide which of the 
problematic authors — Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, 
or Whitman — ranks highest — and Whitman ( 18 19- 
1892), makes the greatest challenge of them all! 
Some regard him a second Homer, and in their Whit- 
mania are absorbed in Whitmanesque literature ; while 

.322 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

others are sure that he is but an impostor, forcing his 
*' Whitmanesque stuff " upon our bookshelves. 

This isolated and eccentric genius was a native of 
West Hills, in '* fish-shaped " Long Island, and after 
his family moved to Brooklyn, he often returned to his 
early home to wander with the fishermen or clam- 
diggers, or hay-cutters, or herdsmen; and one of his 
chief pleasures was to declaim Shakespeare or Homer 
to the sea-gulls or the surf — for it goes without say- 
ing that he was a literary youth and read everything. 
After gaining his education in the Brooklyn pub- 
lic schools, he was a teacher and editor in dif- 
ferent towns in the island; and in Brooklyn he 
was a painter and carpenter, and a writer of edito- 
rials. 

With a passion for crowds, inspiration came to him 
as he watched the busy tide, surging up and down the 
city streets, and he often haunted ferry-boats, omni- 
buses, and theatres, and his companions were drivers, 
pilots, and deck-hands. Presently, a strong desire 
was in him — no less than to put on record his own 
distinctive personality, and it should be unlike that of 
any other American that ever wrote. He changed 
his name Walter to '' Walt "; assumed an unconven- 
tional garb; wore a rough beard; stuck his hat on one 
side of his head; and said what he chose. Naturally 
such audacity did not pass unheeded. 

He began to write his ** Leaves of Grass," which 
was intended to be an appeal to the masses, but he 

323 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

little realised that its profundity was far too great for 
his purpose. 

Whitman, like Whittier and Thoreau, never went 
abroad but travelled widely in the United States and 
Canada — very often as a pedestrian. Once he 
halted in New Orleans for a time to do editorial 
work. For nearly three years during the Civil War, 
he was a volunteer hospital nurse, and he lived on the 
coarsest fare that he might give the boys luxuries ; and 
thousands of those for whom he cared testified to his 
tender ministrations. The war stirred his inmost 
soul, and in his *' Drum-Taps " is a more human touch 
than in any other of his poems. 

His dirge written on the death of Lincoln Is a per- 
feet dirge; and Donald G. Mitchell, after reading it, 
said: — 

" If he gathers coarse weeds into his ' Leaves of Grass/ 
we forget and forgive when he doffs his cap in reverent and 
courtly fashion to * My Captain.' 



) >> 



Defiant of all laws of conventional life he freed 
himself from literary trammels, and felt himself a 
reformer, preaching democracy and comradeship. 
He is better known as a poet than as a prose-writer, 
and with colossal self-confidence announced: ** I cele- 
brate myself and sing myself." The title " Leaves 
of Grass " was given to his collected poems which as 
he said were made of " words simple as grass." In 

324 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

these idealistic gems scattered here and there, he 
discloses his intense fondness for Nature. 

In sympathy with every class but the aristocratic, 
he knew little of society. He had, however, devoted 
literary friends to whom he was '* The good grey 
poet " — among them, Bryant, Burroughs, and Sted- 
man ; and the last honoured him with a whole chapter 
in his *' American Poets " and thus eulogises him: — 

*' Blythe prodigal, the rhythm free and strong 
Of thy brave voice forecasts our poet's song." 

England sees in Whitman our future poet, and this 
is because of the warm appreciation of Swinburne and 
Tennyson and Symonds. 

The venerable poet spent his last days in Camden, 
New Jersey, in a dingy little house, whose library 
held " the storage collection of his life." In the 
town, he was called '* Socrates," or as one has dubbed 
him, " Mr. Socrates." Everybody knew him — and 
expected his kind word — for, after all, he possessed 
a curious kind of sociability* Burroughs says : — 

" He is like a mountain ; as you get away from him in 
point of time and perspective, the features soften down and 
you get the true beauty.'' 

Richard Henry Stoddard (i 825-1 893), was a poor 
Massachusetts boy, who was taken to New York as a 
child, and there found his education in the public 

325 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

schools. Next he worked in a foundry and studied 
poetry at night, for he had a rich fancy, with a fas- 
cinating love of the beautiful. He studied so dili- 
gently in classical and modern poetry that he became 
an excellent critic; and somewhere he tells how he 
wrought his own songs — 

" Like the blowing of the wind 
Or the flowing of the stream 
In the music of my mind.'' 

Through Hawthorne's favour, he obtained a posi- 
tion in the New York custom-house, and served later 
in the dock department and public library; and pres- 
ently he was able to abandon official duties and to de- 
vote himself to his loved literature. For the rest of 
his life, he was known as journalist, and editor — 
and what he preferred most — poet. His prose 
works consist largely of criticism and biography, 
but from first to last he was a poet, and in his 
style, influenced by Wordsworth, Shelley, and 
Keats. 

His *' Songs of Summer " was published in 1856. 
Two stanzas are quoted : — 

" The sky is a drinking-cup, 
That was overturned of old, 
And It pours in the eyes of men 
Its wine of airy gold. 
326 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

We drink that wine all day, 
Till the last drop is drained up, 

And are lighted off to bed 
By the jewels in the cup! " 

His *^ Book of the East " is tinged with the brightness 
of the Orient. 

Stoddard is perhaps not popular, but admired by 
critical lovers of poetry, because his instincts are sure. 
He was imbued alike with the wisdom and the 
strength of the self-educated man; but he fostered 
the literary spirit of his day in New York, working 
in friendship with other authors, specially with Tay- 
lor and Stedman, and for himself he offers this 
apology : — 

" These songs of mine, the best that I have sung, 
Are not my best, for caged within the lines 
Are thousand better, if they would but sing ! " 

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833- 1908), came 
from Hartford to New York, and here entered into 
journalistic work. During the war, he served as 
newspaper correspondent. His most popular poems 
which belong to his earlier years are war ballads and 
lyrics. His others manifest artistic and humourous 
rather than creative gifts. Among them are the elo^ 
quent tribute to Hawthorne, already quoted, and 
many in a vein more light, such as " Toujours 
Amours " and '' Pan in Wall Street." On the last 

327 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

subject Mr. Stedman could write feelingly since for 
thirty-six years he was the '^ Banker-Poet." His re^ 
nown rests on the magnificent books of clear and in- 
cisive criticism which he has left, and from which we 
have several times made extracts. These are in- 
cluded in his invaluable volumes: " Victorian Poets," 
'' Poets of America," '' A Victorian Anthology," 
and " An American Anthology." 

The *' Banker-Poet " was a man of the world, de- 
lighting in the acquaintance of men in different walks 
in life, and a leading factor in literary centres, ever 
ready to assist younger men of letters. He will be 
remembered long as a cordial and optimistic scholar 
with wide knowledge of literature. 

High among the authors that succeeded the old 
New England group must be ranked Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich (1836-1907). *'The Bad Boy" of Ports- 
mouth, New Hampshire, he spent his summers here, 
and his winters in New Orleans. As a youth, he was 
hurried into his uncle's office in New York, for he 
had betrayed an instinct for rhyming and it was 
feared that he might become a poet. Notwithstand- 
ing this precaution, there appeared before he was 
twenty a slender volume of poems. This was fol- 
lowed by his dainty *' Babie Bell," which, copied far 
and wide, would alone have made its author known. 

And now came the conflict between counting-house 
and bookish workshop, and the latter won, and Al- 
drich commenced editorial and journalistic writing in 

328 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

New York, and also became a member of the group 
of notable Metropolitan poets, including Stoddard, 
Stedman, and Taylor. In 1870, he removed to Bos- 
ton, and there his elegant Mount Vernon Street home 
was distinguished for the generous hospitality of its 
host. 

For ten years, he was the clever, mirthful, and 
methodical editor of/* The Atlantic Monthly." He 
was a perfect workman, embroidering his themes to 
the minutest detail. We estimate his tales and poems 
as we would a miniature of artistic finish. One of 
his characteristics was to hold a story till it was com- 
pleted to his full satisfaction. George Parsons 
Lathrop, in the following quotation from Aldrich, il- 
lustrates this point: *' I've got a story under way 
that promises well. But just as my people were in 
the midst of a flourishing conversation, they stopped. 
No one of them would say a thing, and there they sit, 
while IVe been kept waiting a couple of weeks for 
the next speech." Indeed, Aldrich always wrote 
when the mood was on him rather than in careless 
haste. 

His '' Story of a Bad Boy," told in romantic vein, 
admits us to the secrets of his own youthful escapades, 
and it is now not only a juvenile classic, but invests 
the old Portsmouth house with historic charm. In- 
deed, Portsmouth days and Portsmouth ways enter 
into some of his other prose works. His reminis- 
cences of trips abroad are embodied in his graphic 

329 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and amusing book, *' Travels from Ponkapog to 
Pesth." Among the shorter tales are " Marjorie 
Daw " and " Two Bites at a Cherry." 
Aldrich describes a poet as one who 

*' deftly weaves 
A tissue out of autumn leaves, 
With here a thistle, there a rose, 
With art and patience thus is made 
The poet's perfect cloth of gold." 

and in this '' perfect cloth of gold " his verse is 
woven. Here is a description from " Friar Jerome's 
Beautiful Book" — the volume that *' was not writ 
in vain " — and it is a rare picture of an illuminated 
page : — 

" Here and there from out of the woods 
A brilliant tropic bird took flight; 
And through the margins many a vine 
Went wandering — roses, red and white, 
Tulip, windflower, and columbine." 

Aldrich was also a maker of sonnets and of delicate 
quatrains — those ^* Four line epics one might hide 
in the hearts of roses.'' 

Sometimes he is called ** The Poet of Ponkapog," 
because many of his poems hailed from this country 
home not far from Boston; again some would dub 
him ''The American Herrick"; and his flawless 

330 ^ 



"^ 



^TT" 



&«i 




I 



1st, Philadelphia. 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 



I 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 



Copyright, Brown Bios., N. Y. 

F. MARION CRAWFORD 



ii^: 




id 



I' ^ 

hi 



^3 



ti ■ 



vj' 



III 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

lyrics possess the Herrick gem-like polish, but not the 
soul that shines through those of the English bard — 
yet rarely are the two combined. 

Everything from Aldrich's pen was eagerly 
awaited; so we may think him one of the few who 
wrote too little, for seven or eight volumes comprise 
his works, and they are commended as especially de- 
sirable for young people. 

And there are others — and they are legion — 
whom we might add: Donald G. Mitchell, our be- 
loved *' Ik Marvel," who bequeathed us his " Dream 
Life " and ** Reveries of a Bachelor " ; Richard Grant 
White, the noted philologist and Shakesperean critic ; 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, anti-slavery agitator 
and author; John Fiske, the scientist and philosophical 
historian; Sidney Porter, a clever short-story writer; 
Henry Cuyler Bunner, many years the dignified and 
humourous editor of 'Tuck," whose short stories have 
had wide distribution; and Richard Watson Gilder, 
the editor and *Vpoet of the soul." 

And literature like politics could not have existed 
without the newspaper of which Thomas Jefferson 
once said: '* I would rather live in a country with 
newspapers and without a government than in one 
with a government without newspapers." So just a 
word in praise of Horace Greeley, who was potent in 
the thought of his time, and who founded '' The New 
York Tribune." 

To-day publishers are seeking new forms of in- 

331 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

vention, for there is no end of curiosity shown by the 
audiences that wait expectant on their work. And 
fashions change ; yesterday automobile romances held 
attention — to-day, " High Times in an Aeroplane " ; 
while psychology, sociology, economics, romanticism, 
classicism, and realism, are all compelling themes in 
poetry and prose; and the poet finds his inspiration 
even in the city streets where flowers bloom in florists* 
windows, on the market-stall, and in crevices. 

Strong Nature friendships are being established. 
We may ramble in " Fresh Fields," with our essay- 
naturalist; try "Fisherman's Luck" on "Little 
Rivers " ; learn the characteristics of wild animals 
and birds and roadside flowers; and with "Sharp 
Eyes " pry into Nature's tiniest secrets. And as for 
science, what discoveries has its literature proclaimed; 
and America in the short story as constructed by Irv- 
ing, Hawthorne, Pbe, and Bret Harte, has made one 
of her noblest contributions to literature, and never 
was our land better equipped with story-tellers than 
to-day. 

The widest field, however. Is monopolised by the 
novelist. Crawford, in his day, called the novel " a 
pocket theatre," and the novelist, " a public amuser " ; 
but now the best novel may be either psychological, 
realistic, or problematic, and demand the serious at- 
tention of the most serious reader. Mr. Howells, the 
alert novelist, essayist, and editor, and dean of our 
literary guild, who has been true to his traditions 

332 



A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 

says, in comparing the past with the present, that 
there has been no hour of his literary past when he 
has had the least fear for the literary future, and he 
adds : — 

** All of human life has turned more and more to the 
light of democracy, the light of equality, if you please. 
Literature, which was once of the cloister and the school, 
has become more and more of the forum and incidentally 
of the market-place. But it is actuated now by as high 
and noble motives as ever it was in the history of the world, 
and I think that in turning from the vain endeavour of 
creating beauty and devoting itself to the effort of ascer- 
taining life, it is actuated by a clearer motive than he- 
fore. . . . 

" To the backward glance, the light of the past seems one 
great glow, but it is in fact a group of stellar fires. Per- 
haps it is as some incandescent mass that the future will 
behold this present when it has become the past.*' 



NOCTURNE 



(( 



Up to her chamber window 
A slight wire trellis goes, 
And up this Romeo's ladder 
Clambers a bold white rose. 

I lounge in the ilex shadows, 
I see the lady lean, 
Unclasping her silken girdle, 
The curtain's folds between, 
333 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

She smiles on her white-rose lover, 
She reaches out her hand 
And helps him in at the window — 
I see it where I stand ! 

To her scarlet lip she holds him, 
And kisses him many a time — 
Ah, me ! it was he that won her, 
Because he dared to climb ! '* 

— Aldrich. 



334 



XXXI 

.WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 
PART FIRST 

In order to give our story a gentle ending, we just 
glance at the part played by woman in American liter- 
ature. For the feeble twitterings of the songstress 
were very early heard — even from the colonial day 
when Anne Bradstreet lightened the harshness of 
pioneer life by the consolation of poetry. These 
" first breathings '' were a combination of high 
thought, fantastic conceit, and sentimentality, graced 
by poetic touch. 

Tender-hearted Lydia Huntley Sigourney belonged 
to the " Knickerbocker Group "; and her one aim in 
her fifty-six volumes of verse and prose was to do 
good. It is difficult now to realise how much her sol- 
emn lines were quoted in her own day. Her mem- 
orial tablet in, Christ Church, Hartford, bears Whit- 
tier's words : — 

" She sang alone ere womanhood had known 
The gift of song which fills the air to-day; 
Tender and sweet, a music all her own 
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray." 

Among prose-writers, were sentimental and con- 

335 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ventional novelists, whose stately, slow-moving char- 
acters acted conventional parts. *' Charlotte Tem- 
ple," for example, written by the playwright and 
novelist, Mrs. Rowson, was stiff and absurd — the 
heroine always " bedewed with tears." Then there 
was '' The Wide, Wide World," whose lachrymose 
heroine literally absorbed the wide, wide world. 
" The Lamplighter" was more normal in its pious 
setting. But these and other old tales, with chapters 
capped with morals, won phenomenal success when 
they were issued, while now-a-days we count them as 
bits of departed grandeur over which Holmes chants 
the requiem : — 

** Where, O where, are life's lilies and roses, 
Nursed in the golden dawn's smile? 
Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, 
On the old banks of the Nile. 

Where are the Marys and Anns and Elizas 

Living and lovely of yore! 
Look in the columns of old Advertisers, 

Married and dead by the score." 

In this era of stilted ideals and flowery exaggera- 
tion, one very remarkable novel, ** St. Elmo," pene- 
trated every corner of our land as hundreds of mate- 
rial monuments give evidence of the enthusiasm which 
it aroused; for there were " St. Elmo " coaches and 
steamboats and hotels and towns! The novel was 

336 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

written by Augusta Jane Evans, a Southern lady, 
whose '' Beulah " had already won success. 

In '* St. Elmo," Miss Evans catches her heroine, 
Edna Earl, a girl of twelve, a stern little moralist, 
standing at dawn, outlined against Lookout Moun- 
tain; a duel and a wreck quickly follow ^ — and in 
time Edna Earl becomes another Jane Eyre, and 
St. Elmo Murray, another Rochester. And Arthur 
Bartlett Maurice, the critic, claims that beneath the 
pompous phraseology, there lurks a real story, in- 
spired by such lofty ideals and passionate sincerity, 
that, though written over half a century ago, the 
book remains an early chapter in the code of life — 
and '' St. Elmo '' like '' Uncle Tom's Cabin " stands 
apart. 

And what reading was offered boys and girls of 
the earlier times? In colonial days, they were 
probably fascinated with the prodigies of Mather's 
'^Magnalia." Then "Robinson Crusoe," ** Pil- 
grim's Progress," " Gulliver's Travels," " The 
Arabian Nights," and the novels of Scott and Cooper 
— alike held their fancy; while Jacob Abbott's '^ His- 
tories " and " RoUo Books" were everywhere 
sought, for they conveyed wisdom and moral instruc- 
tion in readable form. 

And in turning from the statuesque women-writers 
of a by-gone age to the flesh-and-blood interpreters 
of our own, we shall find a new world opening out 
before the children as before those of larger growth. 

337 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

We recall a few names of women who have made 
healthful impress upon literature — among them, 
Louisa M. Alcott, Mary Mapes Dodge, Helen Hunt 
Jackson, Celia Thaxter, and Sarah Orne Jewett 

To make a brief sketch of Louisa M. Alcott 
( 1 832-1 888), we must in imagination retrace our 
way to intellectual Concord, which through her has 
given a contribution to children's literature. On a 
hillside stands '' Old Orchard House," teeming with 
memories of four clever, wide-awake little women. 
Here it was that ** Joe scribbled. May wrestled for 
fine words; here Beth's little cottage piano stood, 
and May mothered them all when dear Mrs. Marsh 
was away." We know them each one, and remember 
what an Instantaneous welcome all received when they 
made their first courtesy to the public; and it was just 
because they were so real and natural, and proclaimed 
a gospel of simple living and happy work. 

These were their maker's masterpieces ; but at the 
mention of her name, other wholesome children, 
both boys and girls, come trooping into our memory. 
Jusserand says : *' A tale is the first key to the heart 
of a child," — and what a magical key Miss Alcott 
held! Her life was a struggle for she was very 
young when it was discovered that she — rather than 
her visionary father — must be the family bread- 
winner. 

At eight, she wrote her first poem; it was dedi- 
cated *' To a Robin," and her mother encouraged 

338 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

her to keep on, assuring her that she might in time 
become a second Shakespeare. Fired with this 
modest ambition, the child continued to write on such 
subjects as dead butterflies and lost kittens, even until 
the story mania set in; and in order to gain subsist- 
ence, she also did sewing and went out to service, and 
presently her newspaper articles began to be ac- 
cepted; and the little desk now stands in the parlour 
where Louisa turned her observation into manuscript, 
sometimes working all night by the light of a single 
tallow-dip. 

And while the family struggled for daily bread, 
over the way in the " School of Philosophy," Dr. Al- 
cott, " Socratic Talker of his Day," was dispensing 
his " Seer's-rations " of mystical wisdom. Rose 
Hawthorne once said that " the only point at which 
Dr. Alcott ever met the world was in his worship of 
apple trees! " 

Emerson was the truest friend that Dr. Alcott ever 
had; and to Miss Alcott he was *' The Beloved Mas- 
ter," who, by the simple beauty of his life, and the 
wealth and uplift of his works, helped her to under- 
stand herself. She went to the war as a volunteer 
nurse and nearly died of fever. She spent years of 
discouraging toil, before the success of *' Little 
Women " gave her place in the world of letters. 

She died in 1888, in the ** Thoreau-Alcott " home 
in Concord, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery 
not far from her ** Beloved Master," upon whose 

339 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

grave, at his burial, she had laid a lyre of yellow 
jonquils. 

Mrs. Alcott once announced that she ** had been 
married twenty-nine years and moved twenty-seven 
times," and several homes in Concord attest the truth 
of her remark; but It is '' Old Orchard House " that 
the Woman's Club of the town has set apart to be the 
shrine of Louisa M. Alcott. Four rooms are de- 
voted to memorials; the rest is a vacation home for 
working-girls, in tribute to one who sacrificed her 
life in the service of others. 

The story of our next authoress, Mary Mapes 
Dodge ( 1 838-1905), presents a striking contrast to 
that of Louisa M. Alcott. Daughter of Professor 
Mapes, the distinguished writer and scientist, she 
passed a happy childhood in her New York home. 
She never attended school but with her sisters studied 
under tutors. There were no children's magazines, 
but she feasted on ballads and Scott and Bunyan and 
Shakespeare. It seemed as if she had always loved 
to write, and as a maiden, she assisted her father in 
preparing learned pamphlets. 

There was granted her a happy married life of 
a few short years, and then she was left a widow with 
two young sons, and she was at once their comrade, 
rearing them tenderly and wisely. Feeling that she 
must needs do something for their support, she took 
up literature, writing essays and stories for grown-up 
readers; and she improvised bed-time tales for her 

340 



^! 




^ 



1 

I 



1 



11 



CELIA L. THAXTER 



HELEN HUNT JACKSON 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



MARY MAPES DODGE 







(■>.^ 






? X 



1..1 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

boys which she presently determined to offer to other 
children as " The Irvington Stories." 

About the time that these were published, in 1864, 
she became absorbed in Motley's " Dutch Republic," 
as well as in many books concerning quaint and 
valiant little Holland and Dutch history. She com- 
menced to weave a story and soon " Hans Brinker " 
was published. Every chapter as she wrote was 
submitted to the criticism of two Hollanders who 
lived near her, and the tale was so true to life that 
Dutch boys were sure that Hans Brinker had skated 
on the canal ; and once when her own young son went 
into a book-store in Amsterdam and asked for some- 
thing to read, the clerk brought it forth as the best 
juvenile story in Holland; and it was translated not 
only into Dutch — but also into French, German, 
Russian, and Italian. 

With Harriet Beecher Stowe and Donald G. 
Mitchell, Mary Mapes Dodge became editor of 
" Hearth and Home." In this she proved so success- 
ful with the '^ Juvenile Department " that the editors 
of " The Century " asked her to edit a juvenile maga- 
zine, and in 1873, *' St. Nicholas " came into being, 
christened by Mrs. Dodge. Her ideal for a chil- 
dren's magazine was to make it strong, true, and 
beautiful; it must be full of life and eager impulse, 
and its cheer, the cheer of the bird-song; and to the 
fulfilling of this ideal, this brilliant and attractive 
woman devoted the rest of her life. Young readers 

341 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

felt the spell of enthusiasm and always sought her 
stories. 

Among her editorials, the witty little preacher, 
" Jack in the Pulpit," held his audience spell-bound. 
Many were her rhymes and jingles, and among her 
pleasing tales " Donald and Dorothy '^ and ** Pluck." 

Through personal friendship with noted authors, 
she secured from them many contributions, and even 
fascinating *' Lord Fauntleroy " made his first bow 
to the public as a serial in '' St. Nicholas." 

For older people, Mrs. Dodge wrote poems and 
prose tales; among the latter was " Theophilus and 
Others," and among the *^ Others " was amusing 
*' Mrs. Maloney on the Chinese Question." 

Mrs. Dodge was constantly sought by her coterie 
of special friends, and one evening every week she 
was the genial hostess in her New York home, over- 
looking Central Park. And Onteora cast its spell 
over her as over many professional men and women, 
and it was here in her rustic home that she died; and 
this " lover of little ones up to the end " was mourned 
by children to whom she has left a memorial of far- 
reaching influence, even the juvenile classic which 
she sent forth touched with the finest thought and 
fancy of her day ; and Richard Watson Gilder wrote : 

" Many the laurels her bright spirit won ; 

Now that through tears we read * The End/ 
The brightest leaf of all — now all is done — 
Is this : * She was the children's friend.' " 

342 



XXXII 

WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 
PART SECOND 

In 1880, there appeared in " St. Nicholas," a story 
headed '' The Naughtiest Day of My Life." This 
was a confession written by Helen Fiske Hunt Jack- 
son (1831-1884), describing an escapade as a child 
when with another little girl she ran away from her 
home in Amherst, Massachusetts, to Hadley, four 
miles distant. The whole village of Amherst, even 
to college professors, joined in the search, and late 
at night the children were brought back; and in 
merry, impulsive mood, Helen walked in exclaim- 
ing: ** Oh, mother, Fve had a perfectly splendid 
time ! " This is a most characteristic anecdote of 
the childhood of brilliant, impetuous Helen Fiske, 
daughter of Professor Fiske of Amherst College. 

She was married at twenty-one to Captain Hunt 
of the army, and with her social and winning nature, 
enjoyed the wandering life of a military household; 
later her husband, now Major Hunt, was killed in 
Brooklyn, while experimenting with an invention of 
his own for firing projectiles under waten Two 

343 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

years more, and her handsome, precocious son Ben- 
nie died of diphtheria, and before he passed away, 
he made his mother promise not to take her life. 
Stunned by the blows that had followed in swift suc- 
cession, Mrs. Hunt for a time shut herself away from 
the world, and finally her solace came in the form of 
literature. 

In her home in Newport, Rhode Island, she 
studied rhetoric and literary methods and gradually 
acquired careful construction. After years, her 
poems began to be admired. These are on Nature, 
home-life, and abstract themes. They are medita- 
tive rather than joyous, and in their glow and in- 
tensity rank very high. Emerson considered them 
the best of those written by American women, and 
used to carry them in his pocket to read to his 
friends. 

How expressive of her colour-sense and delicate 
ear for melody are her lines : — 

" Chestnuts, clicking one by one, 
Escape from satin burrs; her fringes done, 
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days; 

The summer charily her reds doth lay 
Like jewels in her costliest array; 
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.'* 

And perhaps the sorrow that clouded her own life 
found expression in " The Spinner," from which we 
take extract: — 

344 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" Like a blind spinner in the sun, 

I tread my days; 
I know that all the thread will run 

Appointed ways; 
I know each day will bring its task 
And being blind, no more I ask. 



But listen, listen, day by day, 

To hear their tread 
Who bear the finished web away, 

And cut the thread, 
And bring God's message in the sun, 
* Thou, poor, blind spinner, work is done.' " 

Of restless and adventurous temperament, Mrs. 
Hunt travelled much on the Continent. In her 
" Bits of Travel," she immortalised a German land- 
lady; and while the latter did not enjoy having her 
love-story given to the world, she called the writer 
who had sojourned with her " the kindest lady in 
the world." 

" Bits of Talk " followed " Bits of Travel," and 
these with other things signed with the pen-name 
*' H. H." had very many readers, doubtless because 
the author's personality was so wrought into every 
word. 

" H. H." had early asserted that she would never 
be a woman with '' a hobby"; but after listening to 
lectures in Boston and New York on the wrongs of 
the Indians, her soul was stirred to its depths and 

345 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

from this time she consecrated her life to a single 
purpose — she would emancipate the Indian — as 
Harriet Beecher Stowe had emancipated the negro. 
She travelled over the West, carrying cheer to them 
in their adobe villages as she listened to their tales 
and pledged herself to do what she could, and they 
many times saluted her as '* Queen/' 

To make her facts accurate, she spent three months 
working in the Astor Library, New York, and then 
published her *' Century of Dishonour." At her 
own expense, she sent a copy to every member of 
Congress. The work exhausted her, she went to 
Norway for refreshment; and on her return received 
an appointment from the President to investigate the 
needs of the Indian. Again she searched into her 
problem and her report was clear and vigorous. 

She was interested, also, in early Spanish Missions, 
and these were told of in magazine articles. In 
1884, '' Ramona,'' her best novel, came out. It is 
a powerful work, its moral revealing her interest in 
the red man, and it has now, in 19 13, reached its 
ninety-third printing! 

After years of strenuous labour, her health was 
failing, and she removed to the West. She married 
a Mr. Jackson, a Quaker, and a banker of Colorado 
Springs, and here she made a beautiful home and ten 
years of life remained. Here she cherished her 
human friendships, and her love for flowers which 
she gathered by the carriageful from *' her garden " 

346 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

— as she fondly called a peak of the Cheyenne 
Mountains. 

Her vigour never returned and her last moments 
were full of suffering. Shortly before she died, she 
said: ** My * Century of Dishonour ' and ' Ramona ' 
are the only things I have done of which I am glad 
now; they will leaf out and bear fruit — the rest is 
of no moment." She is buried four miles from 
Colorado Springs, near the summit of Mount Jack- 
son which was named in her honour. She had 
begged that her grave be unadorned " with costly 
shrub or tree or flower "; it is simply a mound over 
which '' The sweet grass its last year's tangles keeps." 
Her novels, sketches, and essays will live, but longer 
than any of them will be read her poems so full of 
gleam and gentleness. 

Our next writer is Celia Laighton Thaxter (1836- 
1894), and to find her literary world, we must in 
fancy transport ourselves to the Isles of Shoals, off 
the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a cluster 
of eight rocky elevations with '' frantic crags," which, 
according to Hawthorne, " are tossed together lying 
in all directions." Celia Laighton's birthplace was 
Portsmouth; but when she was five years old, her 
father, owing to some political disaffection, withdrew 
for ever from the mainland, bringing his wife and 
children to these desolate islands, ten miles out in the 
Atlantic, and here he became keeper of the White 
Island light. 

347 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Celia has described the first landing on the lonely 
rock, in the autumn sunset — the light-house like 
a tall black-capped giant gazing down upon them * — 
while a few goats feeding at its base looked at them 
as they entered the little thick-walled stone cottage, 
from whose deep-seated windows she later made 
many pen-pictures. 

Shells and rocks and waves were playmates of this 
little maiden and her brothers, Oscar and Cedric. 
They watched the sea-fowl soaring aloft or gliding 
over the water; vessels scudding over the dark blue 
sea; stealthy Islanders paddling along the ledges, 
or stretched out on the wet sand looking for wild- 
fowl. They watched, also, the lighting of the lamp 
and as it sent afar its rays, they wondered how many 
hearts it nightly gladdened; and birds and flowers 
were very companionable, and *^ Peggy's Garden " 
in its brilliant glow became famous. 

The child rowed and made rag-carpets and tended 
the sick; and as she older grew, more and more her 
heart went out towards the little Norwegian colony 
of fisher-folk. She heard the '* good-byes "; saw 
the sailing away of the fleet, and the sudden squall 
that sent the small boats swaggering before it; and 
she would go to the little cluster of women assembled 
at the headland and comfort them with words of 
cheer; and her later tales and poems were set in the 
framework of a sea, ** that sparkled, or sang, or 
foamed, or threatened." 

348 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

As a rosy-faced maiden of sixteen, Celia was mar- 
ried to Levi Thatcher, a Browning student, and a 
missionary to the fisher-folk of an adjoining island; 
and then she was spirited away to the new world of 
Boston which suddenly opened before her fascinated 
vision. There were pictures and lectures and con- 
certs and operas and theatres. Mr. Thatcher, with 
his studious nature, did not care for these things, but 
his girl-bride entered into all with a delighted sur- 
prise. 

She never had really thought about admission to 
the field of literature until, unbeknown to her, a friend 
sent one of her poems to " The Atlantic " and it was 
accepted; she was glad and grateful, and her genius 
unfolded as she began to write. Her literary out- 
put is not large, but what she did is full of exquisite 
lyrical expression as ** The Singer of the Shoals," 
and '* The Singer of the Sea." Among her noted 
poems are *' An Old Saw," *' The Burgomaster 
Gull," '' Tacking Ship Off Shore," and the trustful 
'' Sandpiper." Among her tales is *' The Spray 
Sprite " that danced in the breakers, and talked and 
laughed with the loons, and then did patchwork to 
the end of her days; and another tale describes 
Madame Arachne, and how as a child she peeped 
through the light-house window and watched the ad- 
ventures of the wary dame; and *' Island Garden" 
and '' Among the Shoals," and letters and poems, 
are all pleasant reading. 

349 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Mrs. Thaxter spent much of her later life at Ap- 
pledore, the largest island of the group, where her 
brother's home for an occasional guest had developed 
into a hotel ; and this desolate island — 

"With rifts and charms and storm-bleached jags,'^ 

became a favourite resort for artists, musicians, and 
men of letters, lured thither by ** The Singer of the 
Shoals." Among others, Whittier came and Haw- 
thorne and Ole Bull — and '' The Singer " received 
them dressed always in black and white and grey 
with sea-shells for her ornaments ; and she entertained 
them with her music, her verses, or her charming 
conversation. Here she died and was buried; and 
the White Island light-house has disappeared and 
been replaced by another, more powerful but less 
picturesque. 

On a clear day, the Isles of Shoals are distinctly 
visible off the coast of Portsmouth, and not far from 
the town in another direction is South Berwick, 
Maine, the home of another authoress, whose early 
environment like that of Celia Thaxter formed the 
subject of many a later tale. This was Sarah Orne 
Jewett ( 1 849-1909), who, as a delicate child, was 
consigned to an out-of-door life in this quaint, sea- 
board town. She spent her days driving about the 
country with her doctor-father; she became intimate 
with his patients, and learned so much about minister- 

350 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

ing to the sick that she would have liked to be a 
physician. 

Her wise father was a man who hated all affecta- 
tion and insincerity, and with rare tact he taught 
her how to cultivate right powers of observation; and 
when she confided to him her desire to become a 
writer, he advised her not to describe people and 
things in general but just as she saw them — and the 
more she looked, the more interested she grew. 
South Berwick was full of bronze-faced lumbermen 
and sailors and old sea-captains; among the latter 
was her grandfather, and she always loved to hear 
him spin" his yarns because he was '^ a perfect geog- 
raphy in himself." 

Sometimes she lingered about the country-store 
to catch the shrewd and nautical conversations, and 
when she was about fifteen, city boarders with artifi- 
cial ways began to invade the town, and from them 
she gained yet another viewpoint. So through her 
father's showing the way, she acquired marvellous 
insight into human nature, thus gathering material 
for her striking character sketches. Sometimes she 
visited her aunt in Exeter, who lived in a big house, 
adorned with unbroken china plates, and huge jugs 
by the fireplace. 

The early Berwick home is yet standing, associ- 
ated alike with a doctor's oflUce and an author's den, 
with antique portraits and mahogany furniture, and 
a library overflowing with books; its setting, an old- 

351 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

fashioned garden stocked with fragrant posies. 
Somewhere in her reminiscences, Miss Jewett says : — 

"Berwick always seems a little sad even to me! in the 
wane of winter the houses look at each other as if they 
said : * Good Heavens, the things that we remember ! ' but 
after the leaves come out they look quite prepared for the 
best, and quite touchingly cheerful." 

It was through her sympathetic portrayal of New 
England life that Miss Jewett became known in 
Boston society; and her most intimate friendship was 
with Mrs. James T. Fields. 

Miss Jewett regarded literary work experimental, 
its vitality lying in the something that " does itself/' 
and she adds : '' There are stories that you write and 
stories that write themselves in spite of you ! " She 
composed very rapidly, perhaps three thousand 
words a day, and her tales are lighted with touches 
of delicate fancy; there is in them the fragrance of 
woods and the murmur of pines and of tides; por- 
traits of courtly New England dames, and boys and 
girls romancing in country ways. We find these all, 
in her dozen or more books, among which the fol- 
lowing are prominent : " Deep Haven Sketches," 
'' The King of Folly Island," '' A Marsh Island," 
and '* A Country Doctor "; while of " The Country 
of the Pointed Firs," Rudyard Kipling once said to 
her: "I don't believe you ever really knew how 
good that work is I " 

352 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Miss Jewett divided her time between Boston, 
Berwick, and Manchester-by-the-Sea, living there 
much with Mrs. Field. A woman of great dignity 
and sweetness of character, it brought cheer to look 
into her bright, piquant face. Very typical of her 
selfless spirit is her remark to a friend: '' Oh, do let 
us always tell people when we like their work, it 
does so much good I " 

In our brief sketch, we have quoted liberally from 
her own words, for somehow she has unconsciously 
told the world just the things that the world wants 
to know. In closing, we make extracts from her 
letters which have been edited by Mrs. Field. 
Many of these were written to Celia Thaxter whom 
she always addressed as " Sandpiper.'* After Long- 
fellow's death, she eulogises him as follows: "A 
man who has written as Longfellow wrote stays in 
this world always to be known and loved, to be a 
helper and a friend to his fellow-men." 

In another, she speaks of Dr. Holmes as " bearing 
his years cheerfully and drawing old friends closer, 
as he lets the rest of the world slip away little by 
little " ; again, of Phillips Brooks's death and of the 
more than Sunday-like sleep that fell over the city 
during his funeral. An intense admirer of Tenny- 
son, she emphasises the separateness of his life, com- 
paring him to ''a king of old of divine right and 
sacred seclusion." And in expressing her delight 
at meeting him, she writes : " If anybody had come 

353 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and said: 'See Shakespeare with me!' I couldn't 
have felt any more delighted than I did about Tenny- 
son; it was a wonderful face, and he was far and 
away the greatest man I have ever seen I " 

Among other literary women, there is Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps Ward, who wrote with philanthropic 
purpose, calling attention to various forms of social 
disorder; while her venturesome imagination dis- 
played in " Gates Ajar " and like subjects, opened 
before the world the very soul of the New England 
woman. And there is Julia C. R. Dorr, noted for 
her graceful songs and travel sketches; and Mrs. 
Whitney, whose juvenile stories made special appeal 
to the maiden : — 

" Standing with reluctant feet 
Where the brook and river meet;" 

while for over fifty years, Margaret E. Sangster was 
counted an inspirer of home life. 

Alice Morse Earl threw about colonial days the 
spell of her own enthusiasm, alluring one to an in- 
terest in a coffee-pot, a bit of lustre, or a tattered 
calash; and in her gracious company we stray '' into 
old-time gardens, ponder over sun-dials of yesterday, 
dance at plantation feasts, grow acquainted with the 
children of New Amsterdam, or follow the fashion 
of two centuries of belles and beaux." And Emily 
Dickinson must not be omitted, and that *' soul 

354 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

diary " which she wrote just for her own entertain- 
ment in her life of seclusion at Amherst; and since 
her death her poems have been generally read, and 
they contain fragmentary passages of high inspira- 
tion that arc more and more praised as time passes, 

Harriet Prescott Spofford is unique in this group 
in the hues with which she paints her '' Amber Gods," 
** New England Legends," and other fancies. She 
links the past with the present; for as '' Mistress of 
Deer Island," she yet presides over her river-girt 
home. And of these women and of others of whom 
we might speak, the best ideals are becoming classics 
while the weak ones are being winnowed out. 

To-day women are most active in the realm of 
letters, grappling boldly with profound problems and 
*' isms " of every cult. There are laureates of the 
new women and her modern possibilities. The 
most popular subject is realistic fiction. Woman has 
thus far made her literary mark, and the question 
naturally arises: ''What will be her status at the 
end of another hundred years? " 



THE SANDPIPER 

" Across the narrow beach we flit, 
One little sandpiper and I, 
And fast I gather, bit by bit, 
The scattered driftwood bleached and dry, 



355 



STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The wild waves reach their hands for it, 
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, 

As up and down the beach we flit, — 
One little sandpiper and I. 

Above our heads the sullen clouds 

Scud black and swift across the sky; 
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds 

Stand out the white lighthouses high. 
Almost as far as eye can reach 

I see the close-reefed vessels fly, 
As fast we flit along the beach, — 

One little sandpiper and I. 

I watch him as he skims along. 

Uttering his sweet and mournful cry, 
He starts not at my fitful song, 

Or flash of fluttering drapery. 
He has no thought of any wrong; 

He scans me with a fearless eye: 
Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong. 

The little sandpiper and I. 

* Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night 

When the loosed storm breaks furiously? 
My driftwood fire will burn so bright! 

To what warm shelter canst thou fly ? 
I do not fear for thee, though wroth 

The tempest rushes through the sky; 
For are we not God's children both. 

Thou, little sandpiper, and I ? ' " 

— Celia Thaxter. 



356 



WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 

POPPIES IN THE WHEAT 

(Copyright 1892, by Roberts Brothers) 

" Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat, 
A tropic tide of air, with ebb and flow 
Bathes all* the fields of wheat — until they glow 
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat 
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet 
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro 
To mark the shore. The farmer does not know 
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet, 
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain, 
But I, — I smile to think that days remain 
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet 
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain; 
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet. 
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat." 

—H.H. 



357 



AFTERWORD 

We pause just here in our brief and simple " Story 
of American Literature," for we may not attempt 
to interpret to the young people of to-day unrounded 
histories of living authors, many of whom are strik- 
ing an individual note. Some names will be in- 
scribed on the temple of fame. Which may shine 
brightest — who would dare prophesy? 



THE END 



358 



SEP 16 1918. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium' Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1t 



